Primary sources
The original texts I will be referencing
Folengo Teofilo. Opus Merlini Cocaii Macaronicorum : Totam in Pristinam Formam Per Me
Magistrum Acquarium Lodolam Optime Redactum. 1521.
Folengo, Teofilo. “Merlini Cocai Poetae Mantvani Liber Macaronices Libri Xvii. Non Ante Impressi
(1517 Edition).” Open Library, In Aedibus Alexandri Paganini. Inclito Lauredano Principe, 1 Jan. 1970, https://openlibrary.org/books/OL26220262M/Merlini_Cocai_poetae_mantvani_Liber_macaronices_libri_.xvii._non_ante_impressi.
Textual analyses
The thoughts of other scholars so I can see the resources they used to analyze Folengo’s writing.
Camerotto, Alberto. “Analisi formulare della Batrachomyomachia.” Lexis 9–10 (1992): 1–54.
Fabbrovich, Emanuele. Merlin Cocai; Studio Critico Con Annessa: Antologia Dei Maccheroni. 1924.
J. P. Wickersham Crawford. “Teofilo Folengo’s Moschaea and José de Villaviciosa’s La Mosquea.”
PMLA, vol. 27, no. 1, 1912, pp. 76–97. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/456863. Accessed 9 Sep. 2022.
This article focuses on Spanish receptions of Italian epics in the 16th century. He brings up Lope de Vega’s Gatomachia, which I would like to look at, and Jose de Villaviciosa’s La Mosquea (his primary focus) (Crawford 77). Crawford identifies the fact that the epics of Villaviciosa and Teofilo Folengo are so humorous because they tell the story of a near microscopic war between flies and ants. He says, “All the conventionalities of the epic are present, the invocation to the Muse, the councils, reviews of troops, shipwrecks, hand to hand combats, but everything is reduced to the smallest compass possible” (Crawford 78). I was surprised to read that someone, in this case literary critic and writer John Addington Symonds, ranks Folengo’s Macaronea as being on par with the very famous epic by Ludovico Ariosto, Orlando Furioso. They are two very different texts. According to Crawford, Folengo is more known for his Macaronea than his Baldus. I do not currently have a sense of which holds more favor since opinions seem to go back and forth, but it is clear that they are his two most well-known texts. According to Villaviciosa, the Moschaea primarily parodies (1) the Æneid, (2) Matteo Maria Boiardo’s 1495 Orlando Innamorato, (3) Francesco Cieco da Ferrara’s Membriano, (4) Tifi Odasi’s 1490 Macaronea, and, most importantly, (5) the Batrachomyomachia.
Marti, Mario. Italica, vol. 34, no. 3, 1957, pp. 182–85. [Review of Le Maccheronee di Teofilo Folengo,
by E. Bonora]. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/477212. Accessed 20 Oct. 2022.
Scalabrini, Massimo. “The Peasant and the Monster in the Macaronic Works of Teofilo Folengo.”
MLN, vol. 123, no. 1, 2008, pp. 179–91. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/30133960. Accessed 9 Sep. 2022.
This text describes fantasy as an element that drives many of Teofilo Folengo’s works, most notably, his Baldus and series of macaronic stories. This fantasy tends to take shape through the combination of incompatible opposites, described by Scalabrini as a sort of “paradoxical and enigmatic logic” (Scalabrini 180). He goes on to state that on account of this mixing of contaminant elements, macaronic Latin is the perfect vehicle for his writing as there is a struggle inherent in his word choices between the conventions of Italian and those of Latin. Most of this paper focuses on Teofilo Folengo’s most well-known work: Baldus. Scalabrini’s title, “The Peasant and the Monster” comes from his discussion of Folengo’s agricultural inclusions reminiscent of Vergil and events in the Baldus in which characters yearn for a beautiful form while staring in the mirror (he describes this as relating to Ovid).
Linguistics
Useful resources to decode Folengo’s macaronics
Burke, Peter. “Hybrid Languages.” Hybrid Renaissance: Culture, Language, Architecture, Central
European University Press, 2016, pp. 97–112. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7829/j.ctt1d4txq4.10. Accessed 21 Oct. 2022.
Mitchell, B. W.. “Ancient macaronic verse, a correction.” Classical World, vol. XXIV, 1931, pp. 184.
Nova, Alessandro. “Folengo and Romanino: The Questione Della Lingua and Its Eccentric Trends.”
The Art Bulletin, vol. 76, no. 4, 1994, pp. 664–79. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/3046062. Accessed 21 Oct. 2022.
Teofilo’s Character
The life of Teofilo, including the ways in which he interacted with other people and the places he visited, allowing me to narrow my focus when looking for historical context.
Bernardi Perini, Giorgio. “Vita Di Merlino e Vite Virgiliane.” Quaderni folenghiani. Padova :
Imprimitur, 1995-1996. 43–54. Print.
Ruggeri, Carmela Russo. Studi Su Teofilo. G. Giappichelli, 2016.
Russell, Anthony Presti. “Epic Agon and the Strategy of Reform in Folengo and Rabelais.”
Comparative Literature Studies, vol. 34, no. 2, 1997, pp. 119–48. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40247103. Accessed 21 Oct. 2022.
Historical Context
The events that led up to, occurred during, and followed Folengo’s publication of his volume of macaronic poems.
Bianchi, Massimo Luigi, and Germana Ernst. La filosofia del Rinascimento: Figure e problemi. Roma,
Carocci, 2015.
Eisenstein, Elizabeth L. The Printing Press as an Agent of Change: Communications and Cultural
Transformations in Early-Modern Europe: Volumes I and II. Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Ferroni, Giulio. Storia e Testi Della Letteratura Italiana. Mondadori università, 2011.
Firpo, Massimo, and Fabrizio Biferali. Immagini ed eresie nell’Italia del Cinquecento. Bari,
Laterza, 2016.
Garin, Eugenio. Rinascite e Rivoluzioni: Movimenti culturali dal XIV al XVIII secolo. Bari,
Laterza, 2007 (ed. orig. 1975).
Pater, Walter, and Matthew Beaumont. Studies in the History of the Renaissance. Oxford University
Press, 2010.
Petrucci Armando. Libri Scrittura E Pubblico Nel Rinascimento : Guida Storica E Critica. Laterza
1979.
