Minturno’s other treatise, Arte poetica (1563), reduces the dialogue form to catechism (L’arte poetica del signor Antonio Minturno, nella quale si contengono i precetti eroici, tragici, comici, satirici ... Naples, 1725). Though there is some debate in Book I on the validity of romanzo narrative, elsewhere the single interlocutor assigned to each book merely asks the right questions. The work is not a discussion; it is a manual of vernacular poetry so analyzed under headings and sub-headings as to be a book of reference. Systematic and detailed, its doctrine is classical in referring everything ultimately to ancient principles. Its exemplification is abundant, with the usual preference for Petrarch.
Book I, discussing epic, includes the Divina Commedia and Petrarch’s Trionfi, and insists that the lack of unity in Ariosto’s Orlando is a cardinal fault. If the teaching of the ancients “and the example of Homer’s poetry is true, I do not see how another, different from that, is admissible; for truth is one. Therefore the variation of later times will not suffice as a warrant for letting a poem treat more than one action, entire and of just compass, to which everything else should be contributory” (35). What offends Minturno especially is Ariosto’s interruption and resumption.
Book II, discussing drama, though it gives a better account of Aristotle’s theory than the De poeta, still cites Horace, calls actors recitanti, and does not comprehend the idea of a play as a sequence of action.
Book III, dealing with lyric forms, is especially ample as to canzone. The triad of Pindar’s odes he calls volta, rivolta, stanza. His own praises of Charles V consist of five such triads. “As Pindar,” he goes on, “narrates the myths of Tantalus and Pelops, so I told the landing of Aeneas in Africa and Hannibal’s invasion of Italy, with due reference to the Trojan origin of the Romans and of the princely ancestors of Charles” (183-184). After due citation of Dante the book goes on to sonetto, ballata, and other forms with both quotation and analysis, and even devotes a page to reminder of the Latin hymns.
Book IV analyzes style under the headings of the classical elocutio and compositio, and with detailed consideration of metric. The counsels for imitation, though tolerating the usual Renaissance closeness, stop short of Ciceronianism. The concluding advice for revision is drawn from Horace.
8. PARTENIO
Bernardino Partenio devoted five books to Imitation in poetry (Della imitatione poetica ... Venice, 1560). A vernacular dialogue of the De oratore type, it achieves little interchange of views and interposes much delay by ceremonious introduction and interruption. At Murano, near Venice, the main speakers are two elders, Trifone and Trissino, and two younger, Paolo Manutio and Lunisini. The literary fiction is of instructing the latter; but whereas Lunisini remains most of the time silent, Manutio speaks often and sometimes at length. A few other persons pass across the background.
I. After the conventional introduction of poetry as the original philosophy, poetic composition is left to Aristotle and Horace, and poetic style is proposed (7) for discussion by a most confusing division: (1) inventioni through topics; (2) assontioni, which also should mean topics, but are further described as commenti and fittione poetiche (mythology); (3) ordine, conceived as amplification and variation; (4) affetti, passions and moral habit; (5) epiteti.