THE CONCEPT OF MANNERISM IN 'CINQUECENTO' LITERATURE (ITALY).
Item
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Title
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THE CONCEPT OF MANNERISM IN 'CINQUECENTO' LITERATURE (ITALY).
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Identifier
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AAI8023744
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identifier
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8023744
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Creator
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BONAVITA, FRANCESCO.
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Contributor
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Fred Nichols
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Date
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1980
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Literature, Comparative
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Abstract
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Mannerism, as a critical category in the visual arts as well as in Literary Criticism, has not yet become an established term in the standard manuals on the history of Renaissance culture. The notion of mannerism is very often relegated to an ephemeral role. Its origin may be traced as far back as the Attic oratory of the Hellenistic age, because of its turgid and declamatory style, down to the Surrealistic movement of the Twentieth century for its emphasis on Subjectivism.;The purpose of this study is to put the term mannerism in the proper perspective for until now the term itself has evoked considerable confusion. Is the concept of mannerism in literature different from the idea of maniera in the visual arts? What is so peculiar about mannerism in relation to other critical categories?;In essence, the subject of this study is based on the concept of literary mannerism in Cinquecento literature. Its value remains intrinsically comparative in nature in the sense that no discussion of literary mannerism is conceivable without an understanding of mannerism in the visual arts. My immediate aim is to show the history of the concept mannerism as a critical category. I shall show its development by examining the principal figures of both art and literary criticism without necessarily reducing the subject matter to a historiographical phenomenon. I have attempted to group the major critics whose contributions have shaped in some ways the question of mannerism into four principle areas. The first body of criticism is perhaps oldest in that it stems from the Neo-Classical mentality: namely, it sees mannerism as a degeneration of the values of the studia humanitatis. The second dominant posture is very modern, for it sees mannerism as the creation of a new stylistic expression revolutionizing the course of Western Art. The third notion sees mannerism as an aesthetic quality capable of standing on its own merits without necessarily being connected to a particular time or space. The last group of critics understands mannerism as based on the Horatian simile: Ut pictura poesis.;The notion of mannerism is concomitant with the very idea of crisis in the Cinquecento. But to hasten to establish the Sack of Rome of 1527 as the chronological inception of the theory of mannerism is a rather risky proposition. While the so-called "Geistesgeschichte" dynamics may be of intrinsic value to the historian of ideas, they possess an inherent sensationalism which too often preclude one from examining the objected nature of things. The attitude of the artists of the Cinquecento assumes greater intelligibility when we examine the rhetorical transformation and the formalistic experimentation during the course of the Late Renaissance.;The development of classical rhetoric, formal rhetoric, had always been committed to an ideal. The transmutation of mannerist rhetoric, on the other hand, in its emphasis on achieving a discordant, irregular and modern projection may seem similar to the Asianism of Gorgias. In other words, the rhetoric of mannerism is not the essence from which objective reality must be persuasively presented; rather it becomes a means from which the subjective realm may be artistically projected. The Contrast between the phenomenal reality and the world of imagination is greatly accentuated. The traditional patterns of rhetorical figures have been intentionally warped so that a relativistic conception of the universe could be projected. The work of art originating from the manneristic realm embodies an original mode of being which marshals its own system identifiable in relationship to the boundaries of time and space of Cinquecento dynamics.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
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Program
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Comparative Literature
