A Sudden Frenzy: Improvisation, Orality, and Power in Renaissance Italy

Abstract

Coleman has written a comprehensive and accessible study on oral and improvised performance, a common and popular art form during the Italian Renaissance, contrary to Croce's assessment that it “held no historical importance” (146). The book explores the early modern humanistic fascination with the oral literary culture of the ancient world; Coleman employs an extensive intellectual corpus to illuminate the popularity of improvisational canterini as entertainment for the masses. The author examines key figures, including Antonio di Guido, Baccio Ugolini, Marsilio Ficino (from whose translation of Plato the title of the book is inspired), Angelo Poliziano, and Lorenzo de’ Medici, among others. He demonstrates how extemporaneous poetry and music of the early modern period represented a significant cultural force in multiple cities throughout the Italian peninsula, Florence's Piazza San Martino being a particularly important locale.The book contains a concise introduction, with five compact chapters: “The Uses of Oral Poetry in Quattrocento Florence,” “Inspired and Possessed” Marsilio Ficino and Oral Poetry,” “Secret Frenzies” Angelo Poliziano and Invention,” “The Power to Stir Up Others” Lorenzo de’ Medici and Improvisation,” and “The Improvisor and the World of the Courts.” Coleman convincingly analyzes documentation of the popularity of oral performance in early modern Italy, emphasizing that the vernacular ottava (cantari, strambotti, or rispetti) and terza rima (cantari and capitoli) were preferred poetic forms. The author affords extensive details with almost fifty pages of notes to accompany just over one hundred fifty pages of text, as well as a comprehensive bibliography that will be useful to scholars and students interested in oral performance in Renaissance culture.Coleman begins with anecdotes on the effect that ancient verse and legends have on plebeian audiences, demarcating the cultural categories between the highly literate (e.g., Poggio Bracciolini, who frowned upon improvised poetry, and his followers) and the masses. He stresses that the canterino culture was a public source of popular entertainment and often included melodic accompaniment: “[R]ecognition is growing that oral and improvisational performers of poetry and music were a major cultural force in Renaissance Italy” (5). Relying on ancient texts and theories of musical-poetic improvisation, Renaissance oral poets combined a set of preparation and training (ars) and talent (ingenium) together with divine power (furor) to advance their art form.In chapter 1, Coleman describes how the canterini wielded significant power over public attitudes. The relationship between the Medici family and Francesco Sforza was solidified thanks to performers praising the latter's military exploits. Coleman goes on to emphasize the alliance between the well-known araldi to the Signoria, Antonio di Meglio and Anselmo Calderoni, and the Medici family. Their oral poetry and skills as entertainers influenced public attitudes over Medici rule in Florence. In fact, Lucrezia Tornabuoni's literary output functioned in dialogue with the canterini in important respects despite the fact that oral performativity was almost exclusively a male-dominated arena. Coleman also contends that Florentine oral repertoires provided source material for Pulci's Morgante. The author gives readers detailed information about documents that act as historical artifacts for the tradition and popularity of canterino culture in early modern Florence.In chapter 2, Coleman discusses Ficino's relationship with the Medici family and his role as a leading authority of Renaissance culture. The author emphasizes Ficino's important contributions and highlights his translations of Plato's dialogues and his talent on the Orphic lyre—a musical instrument that for Ficino represents an emblem of engagement with ancient oral poetic traditions (44). He was passionate about oral spectacle, especially Greek poetry attributed to the mythical Orpheus and its relationship to a surviving and adaptable poetic corpus. Coleman studies Ficino's musical production, inspired by Orphic poetry, and its connection to his magical and astrological theories. The chapter details Ficino's fascination with Orpheus and advances the theory of divine poetic frenzy featured in the Platonic dialogues, an idea that had been previously expanded in Leonardo Bruni's incomplete Latin translation of the Phaedrus. Ficino was reluctant to publish his personal translations of the Orphic works; nonetheless, he shared them with friends and acquaintances and gave performances of what he believed to be Orphic models. Coleman emphasizes that “exploration of the idea of poetic frenzy was one of Ficino's most singular contributions to fifteenth-century Italian thought” (49). The notion of frenzy is derived from Ficino's commentary on Plato's Phaedrus; he follows this Greek work in his De amore and De divino furore in which he describes how frenzy, when it produces songs and poetry, is related to mystical, prophetic and/or amatory passion.Chapter 3 considers Ficino's influence on Poliziano. Poliziano believes that Platonic theory of divine poetic frenzy is as important as ars in improvised poetic performance. It is this latter element that enables one to succeed and recall earlier literary traditions when performing. For Poliziano, there is a continuity between ancient, especially Homeric poetry, and modern forms of oral poetry: “In place of the pure orality and unmediated inspiration of Homer, Poliziano emphasizes the essential role, for the modern improvisor, of textual study to furnish the raw materials that can be spontaneously recombined in flights of improvisational inspiration” (97).Chapter 4 examines the role of politics in canterino culture, specifically Lorenzo de’ Medici's rule in Florence, and his relationship to popular poetic and musical production, with special attention to his De summo bono and Selve. His unwavering cultivation of improvisational poetry emphasizes a desire to create a golden age in Florence under his authority. Coleman stresses how Lorenzo's lyrical and musical talents were shaped by Ficino and Poliziano. Lorenzo was also influenced by and fascinated with Pulci's adept use of satire, so much so that he parodied Ficino's translation of Plato's Symposium.In his final chapter, Coleman offers an historical account of the personages, events and traditions of the canterino legacy in Italian court culture, when performed poetry was vying for legitimacy among Latin and vernacular lyric. Performers like Bernardo Accolti demonstrated their talents in several different Italian courts and centers with a penchant for altering classic source texts with fantasia and pathos. Coleman demonstrates Accolti's inclusion of female voices in his musical and poetic subject matter, a decision certainly attributed to his contact with women like Isabella d'Este and Elisabetta Gonzaga. He touches on the role between oral poetry and gender and concludes the book by highlighting the well-known Settecento performer, Corilla Olimpica (Maria Maddalena Morelli). Mention of this topic confirms the need for further investigation of the evolution of female participation in improvised performance from the Renaissance to the Romantic period.Coleman's detailed research into the Florentine cantari, their verbal sparring, and their relationship with public tastes and Medicean rule, all make this book memorable. The popularity of improvised verse entertained the masses and often reconciled Platonic furor and Aristotelian imitation and technique. Coleman grapples with differing scholarly opinions regarding the oral poets’ authentic frenzy in extemporaneous performance and the quantity, or lack thereof, of intellectual preparation to achieve such rapturous ecstasy. This text nicely complements Blake Wilson's recent study, Singing to the lyre in Renaissance Italy, a comprehensive examination of the public-facing canterino tradition.