The Cypriot collection of Petrarchist and other Renaissance poems ed. by Paschalis M. Kitromilides, and: Studies on the Cypriot Collection of Renaissance poems ed. by Marina Rodosthenous-Balafa (review)

Abstract

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Reviewed by:

• The Cypriot collection of Petrarchist and other Renaissance poems ed. by Paschalis M. Kitromilides, and: Studies on the Cypriot Collection of Renaissance poems ed. by Marina Rodosthenous-Balafa
• Simos Zenios (bio)

Paschalis M. Kitromilides (Πασχάλης Μ. Κιτρομηλίδης), editor, Η κυπριακή συλλογή πετραρχικών και άλλων αναγεννησιακών ποιημάτων [ The Cypriot collection of Petrarchist and other Renaissance poems]. Introduction by Elsie Tornaritou-Mathiopoulou (Έλση Τορναρίτου-Μαθιοπούλου). Accompanying texts by Giovanna Carbonaro and Irene Papadaki (Ειρήνη Παπαδάκη). Athens: National Hellenic Research Foundation, 2018. Pp. 335. Paper €25.00. Marina Rodosthenous-Balafa (Μαρίνα Ροδοσθένους-Μπαλάφα), editor, Μελέτες για την κυπριακή Συλλογή αναγεννησιακών ποιημάτων [ Studies on the Cypriot Collection of Renaissance poems]. Athens: National Hellenic Research Foundation, 2022. Pp. 153. Paper €20.00.

The two publications under review are the latest to appear in the National Hellenic Research Foundation's Sources of Cypriot Learning and History series, which, under the general editorship of Paschalis M. Kitromilides, has made difficult-to-find and valuable texts from early modern Cyprus accessible to scholars and students. Both these publications depart, in different ways, from the established character of the series. The earlier volume, The Cypriot Collection of Petrarchist and Other Renaissance Poems (henceforth, The Cypriot Collection), edited by Kitromilides, publishes the well-known anonymous collection of 156 poems in codex Marc. gr. IX 32, created between circa 1550 and 1570/71, together with a number of introductory studies, both new and previously published. The collection is well known even to non-specialist scholars and the broader public. It is the crowning achievement of early modern Cypriot literature and it represents the most direct and innovative engagement with Petrarchism that is attested in early modern Greek literature. The collection has been published before: first, accompanied by a French translation, in Siapkara-Pitsillidès 1952 (second edition in 1975; also, Siapkaras-Pitsillidès 1976, with translation into modern Greek and intended for a non-specialist audience) and, more recently, in [End Page 108] Carbonaro 2012, an edition that relies upon and proposes corrections to the text established by Siapkaras-Pitsillidès and which is accompanied by a translation into Italian. The poems of the collection have also been the object of numerous studies by successive generations of scholars. The second volume under review, Studies on the Cypriot Collection of Renaissance Poems (henceforth, Studies on the Collection), presented as a companion to the earlier volume and edited by Marina Rodosthenous-Balafa, adds to this body of scholarship; it is the first book in the Sources of Cypriot Learning and History series to comprise exclusively scholarly studies. An evaluation of the two volumes should consider their merits and contributions in relation to the state of the (well-cultivated) field.

The text of the poems that Kitromilides prints in The Cypriot Collection (59–176) is based mainly on the Siapkara-Pitsillidès edition. The main points of divergence consist in the modernization of the spelling system and, more significantly, in the adoption of most of the corrections proposed in Carbonaro 2012. It is certainly regrettable that the original plans by the series editor to include an edition of the collection by Elsie Tornaritou-Mathiopoulou did not come to fruition. A new edition with a critical apparatus would address a major need in the field. Nevertheless, the volume under consideration is a welcome and useful addition given that Siapkaras-Pitsillidès's edition is long out of print and Carbonaro's edition is less readily available at booksellers. Carbonaro has also contributed three sections to the volume: «Κριτικό Σημείωμα» (Critical note, 177–196), a general survey of the collection and a list of the proposed corrections to Siapkara-Pitsillidès's text; «Οι ιταλικές πηγές» (The Italian sources, 197–244), which provides the text of the Italian poems identified as sources or models for the Cypriot poems; and «Γλωσσάριο» (Glossary, 245–287). The first two of these reproduce the main parts of the corresponding sections in Carbonaro's own edition. The third has been produced specifically for the present volume. The sources and glossary sections, and especially the convenient cross-referencing between them and the poems, are particularly useful for the study of the collection.

Tornaritou-Mathiopoulou's «Προτάσεις και παράμετροι για μια νέα έκδοση του κυπριακού αναγεννησιακού canzoniere της Μαρκιανής» (Proposals and parameters for a new edition of the Cypriot Renaissance canzoniere of the Marciana), first published in 1993, follows a brief preface by Kitromilides and serves as the introduction (15–58). The editor justifies this...