Lies Verbaere

University of Pavia | UNIPV · Department of Humanities

The present article discusses Torquato Tasso’s (1544-1595) representation of leadership in the “Gerusalemme liberata” (1581), which recounts the Christian army’s conquest of Jerusalem during the First Crusade (1095-1099). More specifically, this article focuses on pagan leadership, taking into account the Renaissance idea about the perfect prince a...

This entry offers an overview of Europe’s image of the Turks during the Renaissance. Various interactions, from military conflict to peaceful contact, engendered numerous writings about the Turks. After the Fall of Constantinople (1453), Europeans predominantly called for a crusade until a balance of power was established. Interest in Oriental char...

Conversion was a very pressing issue in early modern Europe. Christians often converted out of opportunism rather than belief, though declaring to having converted only outwardly to save themselves. In the same period, the Turkish ‘other’ increasingly appeared on the Italian stage, and four Italian comedies discuss conversions from Islam to Catholi...

Genette's Seuils considers the dramatic paratext as the odd one out, and, indeed, the early‐modern theatrical paratext has remained understudied. This article discusses the paratexts of the comedies of Giovanni Battista Calderari, a sixteenth‐century author quite neglected by scholars, whose works were published in Vicenza and Venice. By focusing o...

The article investigates the rewriting of Terence’s "The Eunuch" by Giovanni Battista Calderari, who trans- formed the “other” character of the eunuch into a Moorish woman even before the Dutch Gerbrand Adriaenszoon Bredero did with his famous comedy "Moortje". The article explores the implications of this choice concerning questions of gender, eth...

Il volume è l’esito del convegno Assenze e persistenze. L’intertestualità opaca nella letteratura italiana organizzato dai dottorandi di Scienze del testo letterario e musicale (curriculum Filologia moderna) dell’Università degli Studi di Pavia. Introdotto da una premessa di Pietro Gibellini, esso raccoglie dieci interventi di giovani ricercatori,...

Sperone Speroni degli Alvarotti (b. 1500–d. 1588) is a protagonist of the Italian Renaissance between the generation of Pietro Pomponazzi and Pietro Bembo and that of Torquato Tasso and Jacopo Mazzoni. He was educated at the University of Bologna as an Aristotelian under the guidance of Pomponazzi, who remained for him an important inspirational fi...