Stigliani’s world-poem: edition and commentary on an unpublished sonnet by Orazio Persio

Abstract

The aim of this article is to offer the first known critical essay on the work of Orazio Persio (Matera, 1580-1649), with particular attention to his Rime diverse (Matera, Biblioteca Provinciale ‘T. Stigliani’, ms. 085). Some compositions in the mostly unpublished manuscript are addressed by the author to Tommaso Stigliani. One is particularly interesting for its praise of Mondo nuovo, the epic poem that was struggling to reach publication in its reworked and definitive form. Persio’s encomiastic text takes up and re-elaborates the ideas offered by the great vernacular epic models underlying Stigliani’s poem (most notably the Commedia, the Gerusalemme liberata and the Orlando furioso). More significant, however, are the particular effects of meaning deriving from the metaphorical association between ‘poem’ and ‘world’, an association also found in other texts of the Roman milieu in which Persio composed his eulogy.