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Similarly, the objective of poetry also differs from that of history.
Castelvetro as a prescriptive critic displays literal-minded utilitarianism demanding that poetry should serve to make common people happy. Castelvetro published some remarks on the language of Annibal Caro which led to some fierce debates.
As an outcome of these disputes, a certain Alberigo Longo from Salento was killed, perhaps by the same Castelvetro, because his courage matched his erudition.
Therefore, arts and sciences cannot be the subject matter of poetry because they have been considered and understood by reasons, which is not generally accessible to the common people.
Castelvetro then lived in France and in Vienna, where his work on the Poetics of Aristotle, called La poetica di Aristotele vulgarizzata (“Aristotle’s Poetics
Lodovico Castelvetro
literary criticphilologist
Lodovico Castelvetro was an important figure in the development of neo-classicism, especially in drama.
The subject matter in poetry is imagined by the power of poet’s mind with the help of verse. Regarding the poetry, he says, it should serve to give the common people happy.
Castelvetro emphasized Realism in drama, demonstrated the distinction between rhetoric and poetry, and defended poetry as a means of pleasure alone.
Here, he opposes to the earlier opinion that poetry should instruct as well as delight. The subject matter ought to be similar to that of history and resemble it, but is should not be identical. A quarrel with the poet Annibale Caro, initiated by Castelvetro’s criticism of one of Caro’s canzoni, erupted into a major literary feud that led in 1560 to Castelvetro’s summons to Rome by the Inquisition, his subsequent flight from Italy, and his excommunication.
Castelvetro, Lodovico
Lodovico Castelvetro, (born c. 1505, Modena, Duchy of Modena—died Feb. 21, 1571, Chiavenna, Swiss Confederation), a dominant literary critic of the Italian Renaissance, particularly noted for his translation of and independently rendered conclusions from Aristotle’s Poetics, in which he defended the dramatic unities of time, place, and action, as well as the use of poetry for pleasure alone; he thereby helped set the critical norms for drama in the Renaissance and the French Neoclassical period.
Career
lieutenant was his reading of Aristotle that led to a widespread adoption of a tight version of the Three Unities, as a dramatic standard. After living for a time in Rome, Castelvetro returned to Modena and became prominent in literary circles and as a teacher of law. He did not advocate the unity of action, the only unity Aristotle felt to be essential.
Lodovico Castelvetro - Biography and Works
His Poetica d"Aristotele vulgarizzata e sposita ("The Poetics of Aristotle in the Vulgar Language") was called the most famous Italian Renaissance commentary on Aristotle"s Poetics.
Lodovico Castelvetro (1505-1571)
Castelvetro translated and explained the poetics of Aristotle.
He talks about subject matter and form of poetry and history. He establishes unities of time and places as rules of the drama and a kind of inventiveness for its plot which does not have to be derived from history. He was labelled a heretic in 1557, and lived in exile from his native Italy (he was born near Modena).
His Giunta, a commentary on the Prose della volgar lingua by Bembo, is one of the earlier texts on Italian grammar, and linguistics in general.
His contemporaries objected to him that his theories were a little too philosophical for their time.
Poetry ought to have its subject matter form those things which can be understood by the common people and which, when they are understood, make them happy.
Nobly born, Castelvetro was a law student in Bologna, Ferrara, and Padua, then began studies of literature in Siena. Reader response occupies a place in his utilitarian outlook.
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Benedetto Varchi was involved, albeit reluctantly, in this dispute.He speaks of his involvement in the Ercolano, one of the books which are dearest to the lovers of the Florentine tongue.
Castelvetro flatly contradicts Aristotle on a number of issues.