Quaderni d`italianistica : revue officielle de la Société canadienne

Recensioni
trasforma
tere
il
nuH'altro che
gli atti lascivi in
atti vetrosi e schivi è ciò
che può permet-
recupero del rimosso. La sessualità "rimossa" dall'acculturazione"
oppone
si
alla "sessualità accettata" della "naturalità".
Il
secondo motivo centrale dell'opera
plificazione delle
sessualità attraverso cui
Amore
trasto tra
e
fronti dell'altra.
è imperniato, per la studiosa, sull'esem-
dinamiche adolescenziali dell'innamoramento
Il
stabilisce
si
Venere
si
figlio a
e la scoperta della
una "relazione oggettuale intensa"
legge invece
come autoaffermazione
rappresentare
(24).
con-
Il
dell'uno nei con-
dell'adolescente contro la
la naturalità
madre, adulta, a rappresentare ciò che è istituzionalizzato, "culturizzato", come
scrive
Caponigro. La
Aminta
adolescenziale" di
"crisi affettiva
e Silvia
inserisce
si
quindi in queste dinamiche di opposizione tra natura e cultura, contrasto anticipato nel Prologo che
si
concluderà con un
d'amore. Silvia "naturalmente
Quando Aminta
la
possiede
la libera,
"
dopo
pur dopo
lieto fine, sia
matura un senso
narcisistico per
essere stata legata
il
proprio corpo.
ad un albero da Satiro,
dice Caponigro, Silvia viene frustrata sessualmente. Solo
e,
Aminta porterà
di suicidio di
la
giovane a ricambiarne
aggiunge Satiro che Caponigro associa
alla sessualità
il
sentimento.
egli
è in
grado
Satiro, per
di accettarla se
non
entro
Caponigro, a permettere a
i
limiti
Ad
Aminta da
come un
eroe "rassicurante
esposta in Contributi alla psicologia della vita amorosa:
arcaica di ostilità verso
primo
l'uomo che
la
le
la
quale
imposti dalla società. Sarà proprio
parte di Silvia è chiarito secondo
"acerba" rifiuta colui che per
essi si
negata di Aminta; Satiro è
Silvia di liberare la sua sessualità repressa e
permettere ad Aminta, quindi, di mostrarsi
del rifiuto di
non
tentativo
il
quindi portatore di una sessualità della naturalità che viene fuggita da Silvia
non
pene
sofi^erenze e
la
".
Il
motivo
formulazione freudiana
la sessualità di Silvia,
ancora
prospetta l'atto sessuale "per una reazione
possiede per
prima
la
volta" (47).
Nel capitolo quarto, "Dinamiche linguistiche e dinamiche psicologiche", viene
fornito l'indice di frequenza delle occorrenze e viene anche proposta
termini psicologico-linguistici. Al capitolo
passi significativi relativi alla
si
una
lettura in
aggiunge un'appendice che riporta
i
proposta di lettura data nello stesso capitolo.
Nel quinto ed ultimo capitolo, "La negazione
del suo discorso definendo l'opera
dell'eros",
come "dramma
Caponigro
tira le file
essenzialmente psicoanalitico"
(71) perché permette, dice Caponigro, l'esplorazione del profondo e lo svelamen-
La negazione
dell'eros rappre-
dramma una messa
in scena di natu-
to della "precarietà dei suoi codici culturali" (47).
sentata in maniera
non
ra psicanalitica.
testo
litica e di
un
Il
esplicita fa
si
quindi del
avvale anche di
una breve
bibliografia tassiano-psicana-
indice dei nomi.
MARL\ LAURA MOSCO
University
of Toronto
The Premodern
Toronto:
Can$
The
Teenager. Youth
CRRS, 2002.
and Society 1150-1650, ed. Konrad Eisenbichler.
ISBN 0-7727-2018-5. US$ 39.95,
Pp. 348, Figs. 12.
59.95.
publication of Philippe Aries's pioneering L'enfant et la vie familiale sous l'an-
cien régime in
1972 marked the beginning of
— 130 —
a period
of intense research on the
Recensioni
premodern
history of childhood in the
maintained that the sociopsy-
era. Aries
chological concept of childhood did not exist in the Middle Ages, the proof of
which was supposedly demonstrated by the
children
life,
of medieval
artists to
portray
as a special stage in
human
from adulthood, was an invention of the
distinct
from
inability
For Aries, a concept of childhood
realistically.
liberating children
and improving
of childhood denied children the
their lives,
modern
early
period. Far
he held, the so-called invention
freedom they had enjoyed in the Middle
relative
Ages and subjected them to an unprecedented degree of harsh
discipline. Aries's
ideas about the invention
of childhood attracted enthusiastic adherents, but were
many
leading scholars (David Herlihy, Shulamith Shahar,
also
contested by
Barbara Hanawalt, and Nicholas Orme, to
sensus
among
name
There
a few).
historians that the concept of childhood
now a broad
is
con-
was never invented. Quite
the opposite: from the ancient world to the present there existed an ever- mutable,
which has been employed
yet discernable, conceptual vocabulary
children from adults. Current research focuses
on both
of childhood and the actual treatment of children by adults, and
practices relating to childhood
knowledge,
graphic trends, local contexts, and not
Konrad
Eisenbichler,
Archangel Raphael:
the
volume under
and
early
A
how concepts and
were shaped over time by religious
legal prescriptions, family matters,
least,
to distinguish
the cultural construction
beliefs,
medical
socioeconomic conditions, demo-
gender.
the author of the prize-winning study Boys of the
Youth Confraternity in Florence, 1411-1785 and the editor of
review, acknowledges the profusion of research
modern childhood yet contends
attention to adolescence, that formative stage beginning with the
of puberty and terminating with adulthood, that
head of a family, or reached
on mediaeval
that scholars have failed to pay sustained
legal majority.
The
is,
when one
commencement
married, became
seventeen essays represent an
impressive sample of ongoing interdisciplinary research on the culture and
portment of adolescent boys and
The volume
is
girls in
divided into six sections. In the
Youths: Terminology and Sub-Culture,"
com-
medieval and early modern Europe.
Ilaria
first
section, "Identifying
Taddei examines the range of terms
used to refer to male infancy and youth {infante, putto, bambino, fanciullo, adolescente, giovane,
garzone and ragazzo) in Renaissance Florence. Although these
terms had overlapping meanings and did not correspond to precise chronological
ages, various sources indicate that terms such as adolescente carried cultural specificity
and
referred to a person located
between puerizia (boyhood) and giovinezza
(youth). In turn, Ludovica Sebregondi spotlights the clothes
adolescents,
Weinstein
which were designed
reveals, there
adolescents in early
to
worn by Florentine
distinguish them from adult males. As Roni
were crucial differences dividing Jewish and Christian
modern
Italy.
For one thing, having reached the age of
thir-
teen, the beginning of adulthood, both Jewish boys and girls tended to leave the
parental home. In Jewish culture adolescence was treated as a stage of unbridled
and dangerous passions that had to be reined in. While negative views of adolescent passion derived from Augustinianism continued to inform Christian attitudes
toward children, there also existed new perspectives advanced by the humanists
that youth
was a time of positive
intellectual
— 131 —
and
social possibilities.
The major
Recensioni
point of Weinstein's piece
that the ghettoization of Jews in the sixteenth centu-
is
empowered a sub-culture of young Jewish males, who, like their
Christian counterparts, banded together in homosocial gangs prone to violence.
The rituals of youth are the subject of three fine papers, one on Italy, the others on England. Based on her study of sixty volumes of documents produced
ry paradoxically
between 1590 and 1630 by the criminal court {Torrone) of Bologna, Ottavia
how
Niccoli details
the
animated by the reforming
city's authorities,
Council of Trent, worked to curb the supposedly harmful games and
as
of the
zeal
rituals,
men
Bologna and
in
vicinity.
its
According to Niccoli, the most popular
the Bolognese countryside was the ritual of the
the night of the
undeveloped
of the door or
courting or wished to court.
When
with presents,
filled
slippers, signifying
exposed female
May tree
officially
ritual
was
youth of King Edward
performing religious
ritual in
In this ritual, celebrated
the
young woman he was
honour the woman, the
to dishonour, a donkey's bell or a pair
genitalia,
of
were hung from the branches. The
suppressed in 1687 by the papal legate. Although the
much
studied, Virginia A. Cole stresses that in
expected of an aristocratic youth and
rituals
a different tack,
window of
the intention was to
when
has been
II
royal family, the adolescent
Taking
tree.
of May, a suitor placed branches, bunches of flowers, and
first
trees in front
branches were
May
such
young
stone throwing, defending one's honour, public kissing, performed by
Edward
member of the
exhibited a surprising degree of independence.
Robert Zajkowski focuses on the edificatory
rituals attend-
Henry VI into London in 1432.
Regarding education, Mark H. Lawhorn writes about Jacobean theatre as a
for public consideration of the coming of age of young English princes, while
ing the royal entry of the adolescent
site
Marian Rothstein considers the popularity of portrayals of exceptional children
in
Renaissance French novels. Christopher Carlsmith examines the careers of fellowship students
who
left
Bergamo
to study at the University
of Padua in the mid
teenth century and concludes that there was a "greater emphasis
six-
upon imposing
among adolescents after 1550"
of Ruth Mazo Karras paper, which
obedience, orthodoxy and 'godly discipline'
(169).
Teen knights and combat
argues
the subject
is
persuasively that in the chivalric world of male camaraderie of the late
Ages the competition among young and prospective knights
was
less
for the love
Middle
of women
about erotic love than about signaling their masculinity to other men. In
his paper,
the military historian Kelly DeVries cautions that one should not
assume from the examples of the Black Prince and Joan of Arc that adolescents
normally participated in warfare in the Middle Ages. The evidence for children's
participation
The
is
uneven and equivocal.
lead essay
on
sex
and adolescence by Fiona Harris Stoertz contrasts
monastic regulations of the early Middle Ages, which were aimed
at protecting
adolescents from sexual predators, with later monastic regulations, beginning with
those of Cluny in the eleventh century, which were aimed at constraining restless
and intransigent adolescent
Two Gentlemen of Verona to
flesh itself. Phillip
D. Collington uses Shakespeare's
investigate the "cuckoldry anxiety" of adolescent males
provoked by the already-present dread of future wifely
infidelity. In a different
vein, Ursula Potter, writing about the depiction of youthful sexuality in
— 132 —
Romeo
Recensioni
and
Juliet, explores
who
the anxieties of Juliet's father
making, and women's anatomy to
Carol Lansing opens the
a fearful
final section
brings to light several cases concerning
reduces "lovemaking to sex
handicap" (289).
("Teens in Trouble") with an essay that
young
girls
in late thirteenth-century
Bologna, who, without family protection and resources, were forced into concubinage and prostitution and pseudoadulthood. In the concluding
John
essay,
Leland offers an informative discussion of the circumstances prompting young
people to return to their natal homes in the countryside after serving urban
apprenticeships.
Although the addition of essays on medical doctrines and legal regulations
would have enhanced the value of the collection, the volume nevertheless provides
a series of valuable entry points into a fascinating subject.
JULIUS KIRSHNER
University
of Chicago
Comanini, Gregorio. The Pigino, or
On
of Painting: Art Theory in
and notes by Ann Doyle-Ander-
the Purpose
the Late Renaissance, trans, with introduction
son and Giancarlo Maiorino. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 200 1
ISBN 0-8020-3574-4.
xxi, 158.
(cloth),
0-8020-8446-X. (paper). $ 50
.
Pp.
(cloth),
$ 21.95 (paper).
Amidst the piety and censure of the Catholic Reform movement
century
in late sixteenth-
Gregorio Comanini, a Lateran canon resident in Milan, composed a
Italy,
learned dialogue on the purpose of painting: whether painting should merely
delight or instead seriously instruct
and morally
and
specialists
art historians
d'arte del Cinquecento., 3
translation
much
by
Pigino can
graduate
inar
level.
now
art
of Michelangelo,
and students
Trattati
will benefit
art at the
Vasari's
monumental
from
from one stage of development
how
Florentine and
Leonardo and Raphael, exhibited
that heralded the supernatural spirit
shadow of Michelangelo,
Roman
sem-
a
of Michelangelo's
Vasari's
1550
framework of
to the next.
The
peak of perfection
in
from Giotto
to
artists,
salient features in their paintings
art.
Working
for the
Medici and
history reflects his Florentine allegiances.
Lomazzo, on the other hand, was one of several Northern
Vasari's perspective. In his
under-
Lives {Le vite...,
Italian art chronologically, using a
Vasari's artist-genius, establishes the
the narrative. Vasari traces
in the
(
theory that focused on the well-known works by Giorgio
style-criticism to establish progress
to
//
Giancarlo Maiorino brings the text to a
be included in the teaching of Renaissance
and Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo.
Masaccio
Italian edition
Comanini's discussion of painting's purpose would enhance
and 1568) charts the history of
style
treatise,
some Renaissance
this easily readable text.
on Cinquecento
Vasari
to
However, the new and complete English
Ann Doyle-Anderson and
of
known
through Paola Barocchi's
Bari, 1962).
larger audience for the first time. Scholars
several aspects
II
v.,
Comanini's
uplift?
Pigino overo del fine della Pittura of 1591 has been
long and complex Trattato
— 133 —
Italians
who took exception
dell'arte della pittura
to
(Milan, 1584),