Naples and Neapolitans

Carpasso, Giosue.  Le farse; il trionfo; il lamento.  Ed. Milenia Montanile. Naples: Istituto Nazionale di studi sul rinascimento meridionale, 1990.  $60

8vo; 21 cm. 79 p., and 2 plates. Stiff wraps. Fine.  

Only modern edition of this satirist from the court of Naples.

 

De Blasi, Nicola. Tra scritto e parlato: venti lettere mercantili meridionali e toscane del primo quattrocento. Naples: Liguori, 1982.   $90

8vo; 22 cm., 118 p.  Wraps, Minor wear. Inscribed by De Blasi.  

 

Di Costanzo, Angelo (1507-1591) ; Galeazzo di Tarsia (1520-1553).  Le rime d' Angelo di Costanzo, Cavaliere Napoletano. Si sono aggiunte Le rime di Galeazzo di Tarsia.  Padova: Giuseppe Comino, 1738.  $100

Quinta edizione 18cm; 186, [4] pages. Title page in printed in red and black. Woodcut initials and ornaments. Bound in modern blue paper wraps. Bright, clean, wide-margined copy. Reference: Gamba, 1340 ("meritamente si preferisce questa ad ogni altra edizione" [this edition is justly preferred over all others]).

In his lifetime, Angelo di Costanza was known as a poet, one of the best, who also wrote history. Today we think of him primarily as the author of the History of the Kingdom of Naples (1582), while his fine, fluent poetry has gone into eclipse. This edition of his poems by Federigo Seghezzi throws in the work of Di Costanzo's fellow "southern" poet, Galeazzo di Tarsia, who lived and wrote in Cosenza.

 

Ennius, Quintus; Girolamo Colonna, ed. Q. Ennii poetae vetustissimi quae supersunt fragmenta. Naples: Orazio Salviani, 1590.   $2,800

First separate edition. Quarto (23 cm); [8] xvi 505 [44] pages, including errata. Woodcut device on title page, woodcut initials and tailpieces. Bound in old limp vellum, reamins of old ties on lower flap. Spine darkened, scattered foxing. Reference: Adams E-184; Brunet II, 986 ("Première édition, assez rare.")

First Colonna edition and first separate printing of the surviving writings of Ennius, the poet born near modern Lecce whom Romans considered the first great Latin epic bard, and the forerunner of Virgil and Lucretius. Some of the contents had appeared in the anthology edited by the Robert and Henri Estienne in 1564, Fragmenta poetarum veterum Latinorum. Homer appeared to Ennius in a dream revealing he was his reincarnation. Ennius wrote his own epitaph: "Don't bestow tears on me or attend my funeral with weeping. Why? I fly, still living, through people's mouths."
 

[Galateo] Ferrariis, Antonio de. Epistola illustri viro Belisario Aquevivo (Vituperatio litterarum.  Ed. Paola Andrioli Nemola. Galatina: Congedo editore, 1991.  $125

8vo; 112 p. Wraps. Unopened. Inscribed by the editor.  

Critical edition of a dark letter written by a humanist associated with the court of Naples, Antonio de Ferrariis, called il Galateo, on "the uselessness of letters."

 

Galeota, Francesco. Le lettere del 'colibeto.' Naples: Liguori, 1987.  $55 

8vo; 22 cm., 304 p., Wraps, Fine.  

Epistolary and light verse from the Renaissance court of Naples.  

 

[Guido delle Colonne]. Libro de la destructione de Troya: volgarizzamento napoletano trecentesco. Rome: Bonacci, 1986.  $85

8vo; 24 cm, 456 p. and one plate; errata slip laid in.   Wraps. Fine.  First printing of the romance from a fourteenth-century Neapolitan manuscript.

 

Lupo de Spechio. Summa dei re di Napoli e Sicilia e dei re d'Aragona. Naples: Liguori, 1990. $70

8vo; 22 cm., 355 p., Wraps, Fine. 

Critical edition with apparatus of a chronicle of Southern Italian courts, from a 15th century manuscript.  

Parenti, Giovanni. Poeta Proteus Alter: Forma e storia di tre libri di Pontano.  Florence: Olschki, 1985.  $90

8vo; 145 p. Wraps, moderate wear.  

Seminal study of three works by Giovanni Pontano (1429-1503), the principal intellectual of Renaissance Naples and one of the great Neo-Latin poets. Parenti discusses Pontano's early erotic poetry (Parthenopeus), the erotic love poems he wrote for his wife (De amore coniugale), and the poetic "tombstones" he wrote for his friends (De Tumulis). 

Santagata, Marco. La lirica Aragonese:. studi sulla poesia napoletana del secondo Quattrocento. Padua: Editrice Antenore, 1979.  $150

8vo; 434 p. Wraps. Shelf wear only.  

Comprehensive study of a neglected body of work: vernacular poetry in Naples during the latter half of the 15th century.