Anticlassicisms in the Cinquecento

Italian literature of the sixteenth-century often described as Renaissance classicism is genuinely marked by its adherence to at least one of two literary models that are deemed classical: first, the literature of classical antiquity; and second, the classics of fourteenth-century Italian literature. However, this classicism-oriented focus on the Cinquecento established both in research papers and in overall literary- and cultural-historical accounts proves to be problematic. It often ignores the equally relevant literary countertendencies, or anticlassicisms that explicitly and implicitly contradict, subvert, or destabilize this idealised and (rather) limited perspective on Italian literature of the era. The research project Anticlassicisms in the Cinquecento proposed by German and Austrian specialists in the field, Prof. Dr. Marc Föcking (Hamburg), Univ.-Prof. Dr. Susanne Friede (Klagenfurt), Prof. Dr. Florian Mehltretter (München) and PD Dr. Angela Oster (München), will undertake comprehensive topological field studies embracing several different literary genres, that will allow for a systematic analysis as to the scope and functions of these anticlassicisms. Additionally, the group plans to publish both a printed and digital (open-access) handbook that will offer a conceptual demonstration of the many aspects of these anticlassicisms. In doing so, the project will deliver not only a more comprehensive, but a thoroughly novel perspective on Italian Renaissance literature as a whole.

"My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun" - with this famous argutia, William Shakespeare distances himself from the formulae of the love poetry of his time (sonnet 130) and opens up a reflection on rhetoric and truth, as well as on the universality versus the individuality of beauty. While it is possible to read this line as a baroque witticism, it can also be taken as an act of opposition against the perceived dominance of a discursive scheme, or (in a wider sense) a 'classicist' norm, in this case: Petrarchism. Especially in the latter half of the sixteenth century (but not only), such gestures abound, directed against an assortment of normative tendencies, which ranges from Petrarchism to Aristotelianism. Some of these remonstrances have been well studied, while others are fairly unknown. Yet until today, the phenomena in question have never in their totality been the object of a systematic overview or a typology aiming at a certain degree of theoretical abstraction. The project set itself this task. The project sketched an outline of such a synthesis for the Italian Cinquecento (and integrating for the first time some of the lesser-known parts of this repertoire), in the full knowledge of its necessary incompleteness or even reductivity. It proposes a model designed to distinguish four types of 'anticlassicisms', differentiated as to their mode and their object of dissent or deviation: Explicit anticlassicism, implicit anticlassicism, alternative classicism, and paraclassicism. If it is true that in the early modern period norms such as the rules of poetics are experienced and evaluated as elements of a plurality, both the unifying singular term 'classicism' and its counterpart 'anti-classicism' will appear anachronistic or inappropriate. Both sides of the opposition will have to be 'pluralized': Classicisms are contradicted by anticlassicisms. On the other hand, the concept of 'pluralisation' itself falls short of the intuition of earlier anti-classicism research in that it tends to level out the antinomies and hierarchies between model and counter-model, original and parody, etc., which characterise this field, and their possible interrelationships. It makes them disappear in a homogeneous field of manifold possibilities. Consequently, the project described anticlassicisms and their classicist counterparts in the plural, while maintaining the binary relations between them.