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-1Chapter Nineteen

From Italy to Europe: Seventeenth Century Collections of Orationes Fictae

Valentina Nider

In the seventeenth century there was a renewed interest in Italy in orationes fictae, just when historiography, the genre that had first embraced them, began to repudiate them in favour of a more scientific method. Naturally, orationes fictae in the sense of autonomous exercises rather than as enhancing other literary genres continued to be given ample room in schools and academies, and the Jesuits reassessed them for their teaching programmes.1 Our chapter reviews this microgenre of collections of speeches, which was started in Italian by Giovanni Battista Manzini and Giovan Francesco Loredan, before spreading throughout Europe. We shall analyse the works with particular reference to structure and type of speakers and their audience.

Prosopopoeia and ethopoieia played a very important role in the teaching of rhetoric in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The framework of the Ratio

studiorum envisaged exercises for imitation. In a manual that had long been used in

colleges—the De Arte rhetorica libri III by Cipriano Suárez, which was based on Quintilian, Cicero and the Rhetorica ad Herennium— prosopopoeia and ethopoeia were covered in the chapter on Figurae sententiarum. They were accorded more space in the

progymnasmata, which introduced models in which ethopoeia figured as an independent

exercise. Aphthonius, for example, as is generally known, distinguished three main types of orationes fictae, mainly in the first person: idolopoeia, a speech attributed to a dead person or a ghost; prosopopoeia, in which abstract entities are given a voice, and, finally, ethopoieia proper, in which historical or fictitious characters speak. This latter category is subdivided into three types: in the first, affectum prevails, as in the words of Hecuba facing the destruction of Troy; in the second, mores, as in the words of a peasant who sees the sea or a ship for the first time; in the third, which is mixed, the two preceding types are combined, as in the speech of Achilles over the corpse of Patroclus, after he had decided to fight.2 In addition, Priscian subdivides ethopoeia into a simple 1 For orationes fictae and the Boccaccian tradition, see for example, Kolsky (2005) and Franklin (2006). For seventeenth century Spanish literature, see Moner (1989) for Cervantes, and Bueno (2003) for women’s speech in Calderón de la Barca.

2 For Aphthonius, I use the Latin translation, partly from Agricola, partly from Cattaneo (Cattaneo 1517). As regards the structure, according to Aphthonius, after a brief account of prior events, or argumentum, in ethopoeia, three parts based on time can be distinguished: first, the theme is dealt with, beginning with causes and effects and considerations of their repercussions in the present; second, we move to the past, for example, by comparing the present with earlier events, and finally, the event is evaluated in a future

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type, when the person is thinking out loud (as in Scipio Africanus the Elder’s reflections when he was returning from Carthage), or double, if the words are addressed to an audience (like the victorious Scipio to his army). According to Aphthonius, ethopoeiae should, moreover, be brief, in a middling style, and without rhetorical figures or complicated syntax. Translations and printed commentaries of the collections of classical progymnasmata, which abounded in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe, contributed examples of the various types of ethopoeia from sacred history, hagiography and profane history, both medieval and contemporary.3

This classification of speeches was also considered in the gatherings of the Italian literary academies. According to Aurora Egido,4 the output of the European academies —whose verse compositions in particular have been studied—was for the most part oral and intended for the restricted circle of their members, while written compositions were used when the members of the academy took part in official functions that were open to the public.

There is insufficient data to offer a complete picture of this oratorical output— furthermore, they tend to belong to the rhetorical genre of controversy or are eulogies in which the voice is the author’s own—although some examples document the existence of orationes fictae in an academic context, to which most of the authors that we are considering here belonged. Vincenzo Gramigna published various collections of the speeches that record his activity in the Accademia degli Umoristi in Rome and the Accademia degli Oziosi in Naples. He, like many intellectuals of the time, moved about from place to place and resided for a period in Trento, where, in 1625, he published a volume of Orationi. The speeches in the second section of the work concentrate on classical figures. The first of these, in the first person, is dedicated to the forsaken Ariadne, while in the others (“Narciso ammaliato”, “Ocno cangiato in rapa” and “Endimione”), it is the author who is speaking. Later—and so perhaps inspired by a speech from the Ferrante Pallavicino collection, which we shall analyse below—came the Delirii academici de’ signori Ottusi di Spoleto (1642), which are texts that had been declaimed previously at Academy meetings. The first section of the book reproduces the texts of the first gathering, which was given over to the episode of Gyges and Candaules. After recounting what had happened previously and citing Herodotus as the perspective, by anticipating what will happen.

3 For the influence of Aphthonius, see Margolin (1979). Fumaroli (2002) 212ff stresses the need to study the influence of the Second Sophistic on the seventeenth century in greater detail.

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source, the various orazioni were written down. The first of these are in the first person and reflect the point of view of Gyges, whereas in other orazioni, the speakers address Candaules accusingly. In the final speeches, an attempt is made to take stock by weighing up the points of view of the two characters.

The speeches given in the Spanish Academies are also, in general, controversies— with at least two speakers, each one embracing an opposing or simply different argument—and of the epideictic, or demonstrative, genre. Although we know that some sessions were devoted to characters from literature or classical history, this does not imply the composition of autonomous ethopoeiae; these were rather short speeches in direct discourse that were inserted into the orationes as ‘rhetorical proofs’ of ‘their’ characters. For example, in the famous Academia de los Nocturnos in Valencia, they dealt with themes such as the chastity of Lucretia and the deaths of heroines such as Dido, Portia and Cleopatra. The Discurso sobre las ultimas palabras que la reyna Dido

habló antes de matarse, reproduced in the Actas,5 constitutes an example of how an

oratio recta put into the mouth of a character could be utilized in the framework of an

academic speech. The heroine, adopting well-known verses from popular lyrical tradition as her own, mirrors the Spanish cultural and moral horizons of the seventeenth century, embodying rather the heroine burlada of contemporary Spanish theatre than a

relicta from the Ovidian tradition.6

Another important influence to be taken into consideration for reconstructing the cultural climate is precisely the relationship between poetry and prose and, in particular, the relationship between ethopoieia and epistle in the Ovidian tradition. In Italy, the latter poetic genre was being modernized during these same years by Antonio Bruni (Epistole eroiche, 1625), who enriched the predominant theme of love with others such as the master-disciple relationship (Seneca-Nero the Younger). Each epistle is preceded by an “Argomento” that narrates earlier events and background and provides an “Allegoria” that offers a moral interpretation. The elements reveal an open structure. The characters are various: Seneca appears and addresses Nero, and Catherine of Aragon addresses King Henry VIII. This last epistle is a good illustration of the Counter-Reformation militancy of this intellectual in the circle of Pope Urban VIII. In general, however, the epistles are variations on the theme of the relicta in the Ovidian tradition. In a few cases, there is a general reference to the sources, and in the others, the 5 Actas de la Academia de los Nocturnos de Valencia (1994) III, 248–249.

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author discloses their auctores.7 Gino Rizzo perceives in the work a fundamental need for introspective analytical exploration, which is carried out by means of monologues in which extreme passions are reviewed in an elegiac, anti-mimetic framework and whose narrative elements are limited.8

Against this background, we observe in the third decade of the seventeenth century the publication of fictitious speeches by classical figures in collections by the same author, with the amplification, however, of various sources. There is a succession of speeches with no clear continuity. Each oration is preceded by a short “argument” providing information about the background, generally without scholarly references.

To complete the picture of the cultural context in which these collections arose, we should briefly mention the fact that both painting and contemporary music demonstrated an obvious interest in representations of classical heroic themes. Artists such as Guercino, Guido Reni and Poussin bring the ancient heroes to life in their paintings in order to allude allegorically to the major themes of contemporary history. The convergence of literature and works of art is fully realized in the “Rape of Helen” by Guido Reni; this was inspired by the poetics of the Academia dei Gelati in Bologna, whose members, in turn, gave it their blessing in the volume entitled Il trionfo del

pennello (1633), a series of compositions collected by Giovanni Battista Manzini, one

of the founders of the microgenre. The texts of the men of letters of Bologna, including Manzini and Virgilio Malvezzi, future historian and diplomat of Philip IV of Spain, indicate the true meaning of the painting as the exaltation of ideal Beauty represented in the main characters, and celebrate the non-traditional interpretation of the episode given by Guido Reni.9 In contemporary music, we also observe a renewed interest in the solitary figures of the hero and heroine and in their words; the composers in fact devote increasing space in their melodramas to the laments of women. Musicologists have

7 Apuleius (Cupid-Psyche), Homer (Nausicaa-Ulysses), Ovid (Diana-Venus, Iole-Hercules), Plutarch (Ipsicratea–Mithridates VI Eupator, Skedasus-Theban Senate), Virgil (Turnus-Lavinia), Nonnus of Panopolis (Jupiter and Semele), Josephus (Jewish Mother-Vespasian), Justin Justinian (Semiramis-Ninus) Tacitus (Radhamistus-Zenobia, Seneca the Younger-Nero), Livy (Sophonisba-Masinissa), and Italian writers such as Boccaccio, Ariosto and Tasso, and lesser known historians and writers, such as Bonarelli, Strozzi, Polydore Vergil (Catherine of Aragon-Henry VIII) and Nicephorus Gregoras (Tomyris-Clearchus of Sparta).

8 Rizzo (1993) 35. See also Russo (2005) 116–121.

9 In the actual picture, based on post-Homeric sources, the painter depicts a procession that resembles a wedding dance, in which Helen is following Paris of her own volition. For a literary point of view, see Raimondi (1995) 21–54; for an artistic view, see Colomer (1990) 74–87; Bonfait (1988) 326–29 and

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frequently underlined the possible relationships with the contemporary rediscovery of ethopoieiae contained in the collections that we are studying in this chapter.10

1. The founders: Giovanni Battista Manzini and Giovan Francesco Loredan

The texts that instituted this microgenre of seventeenth-century profane oratory11 are I

furori della gioventù (1629) by the Bolognese Giovanni Battista Manzini, and the Scherzi geniali (1632) by Giovan Francesco Loredan, the undisputed prince of the

Accademia degli incogniti, founded in 1630; the information available to us does not enable us to settle the issue of paternity. In one of Guido Casoni’s letter to Niccolò Santo Fiore, published in the first editions of the work of Loredan that have come down to us, he recollects that Loredan composed I furori della gioventù when he was sixteen, that is, in 1623. This information is provided in the biography by Brunacci, who even speaks of an edition of the work going back to that date and citing Manzini and Ferrante Pallavicino as imitators.12 The other biographer, Antonio Lupis, asserts that the Scherzi

geniali enjoyed a huge and immediate commercial success, comparable only to that of

the publication in Paris of Adone by Marino, also in 1623. He recalls, moreover, that the work was attributed to other authors, aroused envy of the Italian Academies, stimulated translations into Spanish and French and was mocked by twisting the title into “Scherzi genitali”.13

Some references to poetics can be seen in the paratexts. Manzini refers to “rhetorical exercises” in the dedication and the prologue to the reader. In the prologue, on the one hand, the elements are defined first as “fievolezze” and then as “piuttosto deliri che studi”; on the other hand, he recalls that the renown of the orators was based on similar compositions. Manzini goes on to say that, in recent years, the decline of the schools had put readers off profane oratory, because of the rigorous nature of the subjects treated and the terseness of the style. The renewal that was necessary was 10 For relations between the epistle and heroic speech literary genres and the tendency to amplify the

lamento in contemporary opera, see L. Bianconi (1991) 219–234 and Heller (2003) 77–78. For a

complete list of the orations and their subjects, see the Appendix.

11 See Lattarico (2012a and 2012b) for the libertinism of the microgenre. 12 Brunacci (1661) 11. For Loredano, see Carminati (2005); for Manzini, see Matt (2006).

13 Lupis (1663) 10–12. For editions (at least twenty-seven editions for the first, and twenty-four for the second part in the seventeenth century) and translations (in French, Spanish, German and Greek) of the

Scherzi geniali, see Menegatti (2000) 53–87 and 331–340; for an analysis of the French translation,

Caprices héroïques by François de Grenaille, see Stangalino (2014); for translations of I Furori della gioventù, vide infra.

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interpreted by some in an exclusively lexical sense, without taking into consideration “concetti” [concepts, ideas], “tessitura” [structure, texture] or “numero” [flow, cadence]; others thought of elevating the style by “macchinando maniere ardite l’hanno reso trabocchevole”; and yet others “ammassando una congerie di sentenze” were guilty of obscurity because they were speaking like oracles. Still others wrote in too plain a manner. The speaker should direct his attention to great things; he should arouse wonder, not depend excessively on imitation. He should take the middle way and not be too prolix in his speech or too laconic either. He should control the substance rather than the form. The model to be imitated is that of the “olmi maritati” that support the grapevines and not the cypresses or ornamental laurel. These exercises, however, should be judged rather for their fantasy than for their doctrine.

In I Furori della gioventù by Manzini there is a first section of eight Orationi delivered by characters from classical history and literature, followed by a second section of four Discorsi in the third person. The orations are preceded by the narration of earlier events, or the argumentum. The titles in general allude to characters and/or the dominant virtue or passion in the speeches (“Affetti paterni”, “Catone generoso”; “Cleopatra umiliata”), although “Coriolano intenerito” alludes to the person addressed. In general, the protagonists, seen at key moments of their lives, are speaking to family members and even the two opposing orations are delivered by relatives: the brother Troilus in “Paride combattuto” and the father of the Horatii in “Orazio reo”. The exception is Agamemnon, who speaks about the sacrifice of Iphigenia to his soldiers (“Affetti paterni”). The sources are not specified, although they have obviously been amplified and all the orations are of a similar length. Only two are delivered by females, neither of whom are lovers; in “Coriolano intenerito”, the speech is given by Coriolanus’ mother, and in “Cleopatra umiliata”, after the death of Mark Antony, Cleopatra tries to persuade Octavian not to take her to Rome as a prisoner.

The Scherzi geniali is a collection of twelve characters’ speeches, to which another dozen were added from the 1638 edition onwards. All are in the first person and all preceded by a dedication, a useful paratext for reconstructing the network of relationships established by the author. They are arranged in alphabetical order, as the printer specifies, to indicate the autonomy of each oration. The female characters are relatively numerous (five in the first collection and four in the second). Some of the cases about love are taken from Ovid, such as the words of “Enone gelosa” (Heroides V), while others examine difficult topics like incest, for example, in “Caracalla amante”,

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in which the latter passionately addresses Julia Domna (described as a relative, but with no further details). Poppaea tries to reconquer Nero after he has recalled the repudiated wife, Octavia, and a dying Mark Antony addresses Cleopatra. There is no shortage of examples of female strength in characters such as Lucretia and Sisygambis, the mother of the defeated Darius III, who consoles his daughters and wives after Alexander’s victory. A political theme is present, in particular, in the orations in which Mark Antony Orator addresses the murderers sent by Marius; Seneca the Younger speaks to Nero, stating that he wants to renounce all his wealth; Sejanus laments his fate. This last speech is the only one that is simple, according to Priscian’s definition. Five speeches are based on the texts of Tacitus,14 although Plutarch and Valerius Maximus are also well represented.

2. The Italian imitators: Pallavicino, Lupis, Pasqualigo and Battista

Most of the Italian authors formed part of the Venetian Accademia degli Incogniti. Ferrante Pallavicino, author of Scena retorica (1640), a collection of twelve speeches each one preceded by an argument, was the most illustrious of the imitators of Loredan and Manzini, and alluded to his predecessors in justifying the very existence of the microgenre as distinct from scholastic rhetorical exercises. Like Loredan, he adopted an alphabetical order and individual dedications for every speech. On the other hand, he was the first author to indicate the sources in the prologue: Justin and Plutarch, chosen for “un supposto di curiosità singolare”. Pallavicino favours unusual themes, such as Cato the Younger who ‘loans’ his wife to his friend Hortensius; the widows of Scythia who chose to live without men, giving rise to the Amazons; the lame Hippotas who asked his fellow conspirators to kill him so that he would not hold up their assassination of the hated tyrant, Ptolemy. The vindicatory speech of Ovid—banished for writing the

Ars amandi—in which he says that whoever is in his situation “cangi luogo” when “non

voglia variar pensiero” can be read as an autobiographical plea on behalf of the future author of the Retorica delle puttane. Pallavicino in the same year, in fact, as the publication of the Scena Retorica, had seen his Corriero svaligiato—an extremely anti-Spanish document in which he also sharply attacked Pope Urban VIII—refused publication by the lay censor.15 This event lay at the root of his decision to abandon 14 Questa (1996) 321.

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Venice. The last composition, “Eolo dolente” was quite topical. It had been published the year before in Genoa, an encomium to the engineer who had constructed the new wharf, as is explained in the Argument. In the speech, the god of the wind laments the way that this new construction challenges his powers (Eolo dolente per l’edificio del

nuovo molo di Genova, dedicated to Ansaldo Mari, 1639). Pallavicino writes that his

characters are placed in extreme situations, which justifies the impassioned tone of the speech, in which he can be accused of “troppo licentioso inferire, ma non [di essere] improporzionato alla lingua di chi li proferisce” [inferring (from the sources) in too licentious a manner, but not (of being) disproportionate to the language of the speaker]. To these elements, he adds: “non ho insomma speso che un talento naturale in profluvi di parole quali a guisa di torrente, scendono da una mente agitata [In other words I have only made use of a natural talent (for generating) floods of words that flow, like a torrent, from an agitated mind]”.

Still in the Venetian Accademia, but many years later, Antonio Lupis, mentioned earlier as the biographer of Loredan, whose secretary he was, published Teatro aperto (1664).16 Again the book is a collection of twelve speeches, each one preceded by the argument and a dedication along the lines of the Scherzi geniali, although not in alphabetical order. In the prologue, he cites Manzini and Loredano among his distinguished predecessors. Among his orations, there are a couple of literary influences (from the Heroides and Ariosto put in the mouths of Hero and Rinaldo) and a nucleus of three speeches about the conspiracy against Julius Caesar (“Marco Antonio adirato” showing the populace Caesar’s blood-stained clothing; “Octavia inumana” is an observer’s tirade against Octavia the Younger who is stabbing the dead Cicero’s tongue; in “Cassio difeso”, Cassius defends the reasons for Caesar’s assassination). The latter two speeches take up themes that Ferrante Pallavicino had already dealt with from another perspective; in “Gige inanimito”, Candaules’ wife speaks to Gyges to persuade him to kill her husband and then marry her, and in “Ovidio bandito”, a courtier addresses Augustus, who has exiled Ovid, having accused him of seducing his daughter Julia. In “Diogene generoso”, the philosopher declines Alexander the Great’s offer of a city and “Timone prudente”, from his retreat, addresses the Athenians, who censure him for withdrawing from the world. The opening of “Crate insensato”, in which a neighbour of the philosopher criticizes him for his extreme decision, stands in contrast to these examples of sobriety.

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The Venetian nobleman, Vincenzo Pasqualigo—author of La galleria dei ritratti

morali (1671) and also of Praelectiones Geniales Ad Philosophiam (1678)—moves

away in part from the literary model of the predecessors. In the long allegorical “Introduzione”, he starts with the creation of Man and ends up at the theory of the four humours. The work has a closed structure, subdivided into three Partimenti: the first devoted to the passions, the second to vices, and the third to virtues. Each section is further subdivided into four, following the model of the houses of the planets corresponding to the months of the year, in each of which we find first the moral portrait proper, a learned theoretical treatise full of Latin quotations, generally from the Bible or classical philosophers, with precise footnoted references; for example, a dissertation “Dell’Afflizione” that follows the portrait “Calpurnia afflitta” opens the “Passioni”. In the prologue, Pasqualigo states that his speeches “dalla pratica d’una varia e geniale lettura furono […] all’improvviso (quasi dirò) concepiti” and that only afterwards did he decide on the structure to contain them.

In his dedication to the Giornate accademiche, which was published in 1673, Giuseppe Battista,17 asserts that he wrote those rhetorical exercises straight out of school when Giovanbattista Manso was running the Accademia degli Oziosi in Naples, perhaps in 1649. In a long second dedication to the academics of the Oziosi, Battista mentions the history of oratory in Greece and Rome. The customary “Argomento” precedes his twelve orations. Battista may have known the earlier collections, although they are not explicitly mentioned. We notice, in fact, that the topics coincide with those of the preceding works, although they are treated from different standpoints. For example, the “Argomento” and the oration of “Ovidio bandito” about the poet’s exile in Tomis allude to both the literary cause adopted by Ferrante Pallavicino (in other words the authorship of the Ars amandi), and Ovid’s flirting with Augustus’ daughter Julia, to which Lupis refers. In the speech, however, he departs significantly from his predecessors. The figure of Ovid in Battista’s collection, for example, does not remonstrate by asserting the quality of his work and saying how despicable Augustus is, but prostrates himself in the manner of a confessed criminal, weeping and asking to be pardoned, lingering over the description of Tomis and its inhabitants. He concludes by begging to be allowed to live nearer to Rome to be closer to his family. Dido is another of the protagonists, although she does not complain about Aeneas forsaking her, as in the Heroides; her speech is a diatribe against Virgil, who has tarnished her reputation. 17 Girardi (1970), De Miranda (2000) 240 and Rasulo (2011) 155–160.

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Diogenes addresses Aristippus rather than Alexander the Great, as is traditionally represented. The sentences are short but not curt, examples are drawn from the classics and also from everyday experience, as when he likens the voice of Socrates’ wife to the “cigolare della girella [catena] di un pozzo [che] non offende l’ortolano”. Socrates is the protagonist of two speeches, as is Solon, and if we add Diogenes, Ovid and Virgil— who, even though he is the figure being addressed, guides Dido’s speech in a literary sense—and Phalaris—who addresses his son Paraula in the tone of the apocryphal Epistles that are attributed to him—we may regard the figure of the philosopher as predominant. In the case of Semiramis, the “Argomento”, unusually, also alludes to the sources: “il suo esercito è descritto da Suida con verità storica, il suo valore da Valerio Massimo in parte, le sue invenzioni da Plutarco non tutte”.

3. Scudéry: French translator and imitator

Femmes illustres ou Harangues heroiques (1642) by Georges de Scudéry, with the

probable collaboration of his sister Madeleine, is a collection of twenty speeches spoken by famous women and dedicated to the fairer sex. The second part was published two years later. In the “Epistre aux dames”, the author states that the style is appropriate to its audience, the lexicon is simple and the rhetorical figures are used to create a natural effect, like a woman’s coiffure, artificially arranged without appearing to be. After all, women are naturally “eloquent” even without having studied rhetoric; nevertheless their eloquence is different from the male eloquence of the university or politics, since any woman who followed its precepts would be considered a monster. Scudéry here cites his translation of I Furori della gioventù entitled Les Harangues, ou Discours

académiques, published in the same year.18

In the translation, Scudéry introduces important innovations that he maintains even in his original collection: he chose not to reproduce the titles of individual orations and to introduce an “Effect de cette harangue” at the end of each one, in other words, a kind of conclusion drawn from narrating the exposition of the events evoked, which, along with the initial argument, created a frame for the oration. Very often, this effect is ineluctable, since the words of the heroine do not save her from death. Another addition with respect to the model, which was already announced in the subtitle (avec les 18 The work of Scudéry was reprinted three times: in 1659, 1662 and 1670; in 1681, it was translated from French to English. See R. Zuber (1968) 73 and 365.

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véritables portraits de ces héroines des medailles antiques), is the insertion of the

portrait of each heroine in an antique medallion after the argument. In the main, just the face is reproduced, set within the medallion, and the heroine identified by an inscription in French around the edge. Scholars underline the links between the work and French cultural institutions at the time: the salons, protofeminism and galanterie and the vogue for oratory and the novel. The main figures are generally drawn from the history of Rome and are, for the most part, queens or aristocrats. They are used as illustrations of feminine virtues. The author informs the reader that the order of these compositions— even if the characters are classical figures, they are subject to the influence of modern tragedy—is not chronological but corresponds rather to the ideal of variatio. In the second collection, the protagonists are mostly drawn from literary works, such as Ariosto and Tasso, and the classics, such as the Heroides, Homer, Virgil and Heliodorus. The themes are revealed in the “Table des suiets” and include “discorsi contrapposti” (for example, Bradamante shows Ruggiero that love is preferable to honour, while in the following oration, Marfisa shows Bradamante that the opposite is true). According to Rosa Galli Pellegrini, the sources determine the rhetorical genre: demonstrative in the second collection and deliberative in the first.19

4. Spanish imitators inside and outside Spain: Lucio Espinosa y Malo and Penso de la Vega

Although there are Spanish translations of the collections of Loredan (1688 and 1731) and Lupis (1697), the two well-known imitators of the microgenre were not translators, but writers who lived in Italy and took part in the literary academies and had direct access to the models.

As a young man, Felix de Lucio Espinosa y Malo (1646–1691) took part in the Academy of the Prince of Esquilache in Zaragoza, then in other Academies in Naples where he graduated in utroque iure. He immediately returned to Spain and became a member of an Academy in Madrid. Back in Italy, from 1687 to 1691, he became “secretario de Estado y Guerra en el reyno de Sicilia”. He inserted several orations of

19 Galli Pellegrini (1977) 113. For this collection, see the bibliography in Rolla (2005). http://www.farum.it/femmes.illustres/?item=bibliographie. I do not deal here with the role that his sister Madeleine actually played in writing the work.

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the kind that interests us in Declamaciones: escarmientos politicos y morales (1674).20 The Italian model is not followed strictly because some of the twelve orations are in the third person and are very short. However, as the author writes in the prologue “To the reader”, the differences may be due to the reworking. He states in fact that he wrote his speeches several years before and had decided to shorten them with a view to publication, turning the “declamaciones” into “escarmientos”, that is, ‘warnings’, ‘lessons’.

Various Spanish writers intervene in the paratext of Declamaciones. In general, they claimed an “hispanidad” before the fact for the genre, citing Seneca the Elder and Marcus Porcius Latro. Only Alonso Siliceo points out that the work is an imitation of Italian models, Mascardi and Manzini, and especially, the Neapolitan marinisti.

The heroes of the Declamaciones are the same as those in the famous Italian collections: Gaius Mucius Scaevola, Crates, Sejanus, Belisarius, Veturia, Cicero, Seneca the Younger, Hannibal and Octavia the Younger. The first two orations by Gaius Mucius Scaevola and Crates, and the one featuring Octavia are pastiches, or rather abridged versions (possibly a shortened version of an original full translation) from Lupis’ Teatro aperto. A curiosity of these compositions is the characters’ insistence on their own bodies, evoking their injuries or mutilations, which the reciting voice refers to as if dissociated from them and making use of gestures that can be easily inferred. This aspect leads us to hypothesize a ‘theatrical’ reading, somewhat like a monologue where this technique is common. This is evident in the speeches of Gaius Mucius Scaevola; of Belisarius blinded by Justinian; of Cicero who, with his head cut off, addresses his murderer, Popilius; of Octavia the Younger, who stabs the dead Cicero’s tongue with the pins from her hair. Even themes that are traditionally less macabre, become so in Lucio Espinosa y Malo’s reading of them.

In the second part of the following volume, Ocios morales: divididos en

descripciones symbolicas y declamaciones heroycas (1691), the author is inspired by

figures from European history, including both anonymous and popular characters (Masaniello), in order to outline a new concept of the heroic that was also extended to the sphere of private life.

The collection includes thirty-three speeches (twelve of which are from the first collection), but in only one case is there is a character that speaks (Mary Stuart to Queen 20 For this collection, see Nider (2011). For the Italian literary influence on Penso de la Vega, see also Liebermann (2001).

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Elizabeth). In only a few cases is the source specified in the argument. For the most part, they are speeches in which the author comments in the third person on the exemplary actions of the characters; in many cases, they involve a tirade against them. Lucio’s legal training may have had some bearing on the formulation of theoretical cases—like those in Aphthonius’ manual on mores—based on anecdotes that lacked any kind of reference to history or even names of people or places. Declamacion XI deals with the case of a dying father who says that only one of his children is really his and that he wants to leave his inheritance to him. The judge orders the body to be exhumed and his alleged sons to shoot their alleged father with a bow and arrow. Obviously, the real son is the one who refuses to follow the order.

The other collection in Spanish is the Ideas possibles of José Penso de la Vega Passarinho.21 The writer was a Sephardic Jew, born in 1650, in Espejo, Andalusia. He moved to Amsterdam with his family as a child, then lived for some years in Livorno (Leghorn), probably between 1675 and the early 1680s. Ideas possibles, which was only published in Holland in 1692, was partly composed about ten years earlier. The collection includes a section of five speeches translated from collections of Italian authors, followed by a further seven that the author wrote himself. In the prologue, Penso asserts the originality of his work, declaring that he was the first writer in the new genre in Spanish and to present an anthology of the most important authors in translation:

Inventaron un modo de discursos los etruscos (a que fueron imitando después otros ingenios relevantes que sirvieron de lustre a la Italia, y de suspensión a la fama) que sin atarse a la erudición, admiraron con la elegancia, pintando con tanta eficacia lo que podía ser que dan a entender que fue, pues que como si hubiera sido expresión con tan vivos colores lo que es posible que fuera, que quasi le juzga por imposible que no fuese.

The speeches of the Italian authors whose works were translated are taken either from the foundational collections of the genre (“Paride innamorato” from Manzini’s I

furori della gioventù; “Candaule pentito”, from Pallavicino’s Scena retorica; “Cicerone

dolente”, from Loredan’s Scherzi geniali) or from works printed shortly before Penso arrived in Livorno (“Crate insensato” from Teatro aperto by Lupis, and “Domiziano ambizioso” from La galleria de’ ritratti morali by Pasqualigo). All the authors imitated were members of the Accademia degli Incogniti, whose prestige, and that of Loredan in 21 Den Boer (1995) 55 demonstrates that the edition was published in Amsterdam. For this collection, see Nider (2010).

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particular, heavily influenced Penso, as well as the Ideas possibles, to judge from the list of works quoted in the prologue to the reader of his collection of novellas Rumbos

peligrosos (1683), which he said he composed during his Italian period.

With regard to the structure of the twelve speeches, unlike the Italian collections, we find thematic correspondences that were used as the basis for constructing the work and that seem to put the translated works and the originals on an equal footing. The orations are arranged in a sequence of opposing pairs: for example “Paride innamorato” (I) corresponds to “Candaule pentito” (II); power-hungry “Domiziano ambizioso” (III) to Crates, who displays indifference (IV); Cicero, who bewails his depraved disobedient son (V) to Abraham, who simultaneously weeps over and praises the silent obedience of Isaac as he is led to the sacrifice (VI); a victorious Jonathan, destined nevertheless to be sacrificed by his father, who does not accept his fate because it appears unjust to him and then pleads his cause in an impassioned speech to his soldiers (VII), to David, who speaks to Saul to convince him to let him fight Goliath (VIII). The last four orations involve themes about love; here, female characters make their appearance: Tamar raped by her brother (IX) corresponds to Samson betrayed by Delilah (X) and finally, Potiphar (XI) corresponds to Joseph (XII). These last two Ideas are also structured differently. The reasons given by Potiphar to convince her lover are articulated in thirty-five numbered paragraphs, with a similar number in Joseph’s response.

The change to the biblical theme in this work represents a development comparable to the selection of exclusively female characters in Scudéry’s collection and is in line with the confessional characteristics of part of the output of the author, who had also composed some sermons in Livorno. Ideas possibles is interesting as a document of Penso de la Vega’s italianismo, probably owing both to his desire to distance himself from Spanish culture and to the perceived originality of the Italian collections. Another reason may be that his readings of profane texts can be traced back to the time he spent in Livorno, where the Jewish community was culturally more open than the Dutch, which tended to be more strictly orthodox. In Italy, the elements of rhetorical skill represented by the speeches in the degli Incogniti collections were also considered useful for training preachers and in his original declamaciones Penso’s intention was none other than to renew sacred oratory.

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Marc Fumaroli states that, for the Italian authors who concentrated on the particular oratorical genre that we are considering here, the novel was an almost inevitable next step.22 The same thing also occurred with the French imitators, such as Scudéry, and with respect to Penso, we can see that he made the most of the influence of the translated models in the collected novellas of his Rumbos peligrosos, composed during the same period.

Without wishing to enter into the seventeenth century debate about the legitimacy of the orationes in historiography,23 we may broaden the discussion to also include genres that are as difficult to classify as the storie meditate and historical–political treatises, which seem to set up a dialogue with some of the speeches cited. Think, for example, of “Seiano disfavorito” from the Scherzi geniali and Manzini’s Peripetia di

Fortuna, ovvero Sopra la caduta di Seiano, composed in 1628, a “breve

considerazione” that is almost always published in conjunction with I Furori della

gioventù.24

This analytical review of the collections of orationes fictae enables us, in any case, to make some observations of a general nature. First of all, we should reiterate the importance of Venice and the Accademia degli Incogniti in the genesis and dissemination of this microgenre; this was due primarily to an undoubted publishing success both in Italy and across Europe, testimony to the existence of a public that appreciated the popularization of classical subjects and the vogue, in the most diverse arts, for looking at the ‘heroic’ character from the inside. The claim of such compositions to be ‘literary’ is based on the very fact that they were publications, to establish that they were different from the ‘exercises’ that were normally relegated to generally oral use in schools and academies. Nevertheless, this independence does not appear to have been fully achieved, since most authors felt the need to hide behind the fact that the composition of these works went back to their youth. Another trace of their original limited circulation in the Academy—at least in the case of the ‘founders’ and their Italian imitators—is the presence of individual dedications.

Among the constants, we can consider their length, which is similar in the speeches in all the collections; the absence of erudition (even when, as in Pasqualigo, the speeches are framed in such a way as to make a display of it); the fact that most of these speeches are addressed to a single listener who is constantly evoked, rather than a 22 Fumaroli (1994) 219–222.

23 For this, see Pineda (2007) and Bellini (2008).

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larger audience (the army, the people, and so on). Famous figures of the classical world are represented but, in some cases, the most well-known character is the addressee of an oration that is spoken by an anonymous voice (a fellow citizen, and so on) or a fictitious name (Titus Tatius in the work of Loredan). In addition, some authors, such as Pallavicino, search for lesser-known episodes and characters, while others prefer certain figures, such as the philosopher in Pasqualigo. This is also true of the female characters, who do not always correspond to Ovid’s relictae. The figures of mothers (Veturia, Sisygambis, Agrippina the Younger) are well represented, as are forceful, resolute women. Even when the characters are canonical (in the case of Dido), the theme of their speeches is not necessarily typical, as in the compositions of Pasqualigo or Battista, which show some unusual aspect of them.

The initially ‘open’ structure of the works, clearly indicated by the alphabetical order, tends to become less flexible, or ‘closed’ in the later collections, when it is based on internal cross-references and oppositions between different speeches (as in the case of Penso) or by using allegorical schemata (Pasqualigo and Penso de la Vega). The later Italian collections (Pasqualigo) and the imitations by foreign authors indicate the directions in which the genre developed within the framework of the proteiform European Baroque.

Interesting avenues of research in this field open up for an in-depth study of the fates of individual characters. An analysis of the amplification of classical sources in the speeches of these collections in prose and contemporary art, theatre and poetry could show the changes in taste and sensibility that occurred during the seventeenth century, particularly for female characters.

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