Self-Commentary in Early Modern European Literature, 1400–1700

Francesco Venturi, PhD (2012, University of Siena), is Associate Professor of Italian Literature at the University of Oslo. He has published widely in the field of early modern and twentieth-century literature and culture, including the monograph Genesi e storia della ‘trilogia’ di Andrea Zanzotto (ETS, 2016).

• AcknowledgementsList of IllustrationsNotes on the EditorNotes on the ContributorsIntroductionFrancesco Venturi1 Alberti’s Commentarium to His First Literary Work: Self-Commentary as Self-Presentation in the PhilodoxeosMartin McLaughlin2 Elucidation and Self-Explanation in Filelfo’s MarginaliaJeroen De Keyser3 Vernacular Self-Commentary during Medieval Early Modernity: Reginald Pecock and Gavin DouglasIan Johnson4 On the Threshold of Poems: a Paratextual Approach to the Narrative/Lyric Opposition in Italian Renaissance PoetryFederica Pich5 Self-Commentary on Language in Sixteenth-Century Italian Prefatory LettersBrian Richardson6 ‘All Outward and on Show’: Montaigne’s External GlossesJohn O’Brien7 Companions in Folly: Genre and Poetic Practice in Five Elizabethan AnthologiesHarriet Archer8 The Journey of the Soul: The Prose Commentaries on His Own Poems by St John of the CrossColin P. Thompson9 Blood, Sweat, and Tears: Annotation and Self-Exegesis in La CeppèdeRussell Ganim10 Can a Poet be ‘Master of [his] owne Meaning’? George Chapman and the Paradoxes of AuthorshipGilles Bertheau11 Critical Failures: Corneille Observes His SpectatorsJoseph Harris12 Self-Criticism, Self-Assessment, and Self-Affirmation: The Case of the (Young) Author in Early Modern Dutch LiteratureEls Stronks13 Reading the Margins: The Uses of Authorial Side Glosses in Anna Stanisławska’s Transaction (1685)Magdalena Ożarska14 Mockery and Erudition: Alessandro Tassoni’s Secchia rapita and Francesco Redi’s Bacco in ToscanaCarlo CarusoAfterwordRichard MaberIndex Nominum

"Its wide-ranging aspect is what makes this work thought provoking, demanding, and well worth the effort."Barbara A. Goodman, Clayton State University, in Seventeenth-Century News 78.1-2, pp. 59-63"[a] splendid collection of essays on authorial self-commentary [...] The fertile insights and extensive bibliographies that mark every contribution to the volume make it required reading for historians of Renaissance and Reformation literature."William J. Kennedy, Cornell University, in Renaissance and Reformation 43.1, pp. 294-296