Contents

Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter i
2. Contents v
3. PREFACE: THE LYRE OF HERMES vii
4. INTRODUCTION. Beyond Explication: Poets and Their Own Commentaries 1
5. Part One. Dante and Boccaccio: The Emergence of Italian Poetic Self-Commentary
6. 1. 'You might call it something of a commentary': Defining Terms in Dante's Vita Nuova and Convivio 25
7. 2. 'Only the ploughshare aided by many clever talents cleaves the soil of poetry': Boccaccio's Earthly Vision of the Text and the Requisites for its Interpretation 52
8. Part Two. Poetic Self-Commentary Reborn in Quattrocento Florence
9. 3. 'Know thyself: Self-knowledge and New Life in Lorenzo de' Medici's Commentary on My Sonnets 71
10. 4. 'Distorted in contrary senses': Girolamo Benivieni's Self- Commentative Reformation 96
11. Part Three. Poetic Self-Commentary at the End of the Renaissance
12. 5. 'It is neither formed nor form': Reading Beyond the Lines of Bruno's Dialogic Self-Commentary, the Heroic Frenzies 119
13. 6. 'Did we not prophesy in Your name?': Settimontano Squilla as the Apocalyptic Seventh Trumpet in Tommaso Campanella's Vatic Project 134
14. 7. Invocation, Interpretation, Inspiration 153
15. NOTES 163
16. BIBLIOGRAPHY 217
17. INDEX 239