BEMBO, Pietro. [with] SANNAZZARO.

£3,750 · Offered by Sokol Books

.A remarkable combination of two classics of Italian literature. This edition of Gli Asolani is the .second by Aldus, reprinted from the first of 1505 with the dedication to Bembo s lover Lucrezia .Borgia, which was suppressed from many copies of the first. Sannazzaro s Arcadia is also in its .second Aldine edition (first 1514) and it includes Aldus dedication to the author. .This copy of Gli Asolani bears the distinctive signature Philippes Desportes of the French .Baroque poet Philippe Desportes (1546-1606), abbot of Tiron (Eure-et-Loire). He is known as the .French Tibullus, for the sweetness and ease of his verses. .Born in Venice, Pietro Bembo (1470-1547) was a scholar, poet, critic and later cardinal. After his .studies at Messina and Padua, he travelled extensively in Italy. His love for the Tuscan vernacular, .which he considered the perfect language for Italian literature, developed during a stay in Florence. .In 1525, he published Le prose della volgar lingua , a ground-breaking work of philology and .literary criticism celebrating the cultural value of the vernacular versus Latin and electing Dante, .Petrarch and Boccaccio masters of the Tuscan vernacular whose works he also edited as the .highest models for Italian poets. His codification of the Tuscan written dialect as a literary language .constitutes the basis for the development of the modern Italian language. Gli Asolani is Bembo s .first important work and a bestseller, comprising a series on dialogues on lo

• Binding: Hardcover

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