Publisher's Synopsis
The individuals who form the focus of this study were relatively minor, yet fascinating, figures who operated on the cultural margins of sixteenth-century Florence during the rule of Cosimo I de' Medici. They include the courtesan and poetess Tullia d'Aragona; the scurrilous and controversial dramatist Antonfrancesco Grazzini; the hitherto unknown academician and satirist Alfonso de' Pazzi, and the equally unfamiliar hunchback poet Girolamo Amelonghi. - - All of these individuals were associated with, if not actually members of, the Medici-sponsored Florentine Academy in the 1540s and 50s, a period of pronounced social and cultural transition arising from the changed political circumstances of the city under the government of Duke Cosimo I. In this volume, Domenico Zanre examines the ways in which Grazzini, Amelonghi, Pazzi, and d'Aragona attempted to produce 'alternative' literary responses within a dominant officially-sanctioned and closely-controlled environment which sought to contain and/or exclude them. - - Combining painstaking archival research with recent theoretical work on marginality and masculinity, this book represents an original and important contribution to the study of early modern cultural history, literature, and politics. - -
