Wissen ist Macht!: Nicolò Partenio Giannettasio (1648–1715) und die neulateinische Gelehrtenkultur der Jesuiten in Neapel

Claudia Schindler

doi:10.1515/scipo-2014-0103

Abstract

With his poems, which comprise more than 40.000 hexametric verses and cover a wide range of secular topics, the Neapolitan Jesuit Nicolò Partenio Giannettasio (1648-1715) represents a very distinct form of neo-Latin didactic poetry: on the one hand, Giannettasio’s poems refer to the literary models of classical antiquity such as Vergil’s Georgics and contemporary Jesuit didactic poetry such as René Rapin’s Hortorum libri. Hence, the poet from Naples claims for himself to be the natural heir of his ›Neapolitan‹ poetic predecessors Vergil, Pontano and Sannazaro. On the other hand, Giannettasio’s poetry can be regarded as a very specific instrument used to spread Jesuit doctrine. The secular topics of his poems perfectly match the scientific interests of the Societas Iesu, and at the end of the sixteenth century, it is exactly this specific form of poetry that grants its success. As the addressees of his didactic poems are highly educated aristocrats, Giannettasio tries to emulate their literary taste and arranges the scientific material in a way that resembles the baroque Kunstkammer rather than a (plain) scientific treatise. Nevertheless, Giannettasio never loses sight of the principles of the Jesuit order. All in all, Giannettasio’s didactic poems provide a unique example for the combination of scientific material, classical models, and Jesuit doctrine and for spreading a local literary microculture by means of the worldwide Jesuit network.

Wissen ist Macht!

Abstract

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