Excerpt from Renaissance in Italy, Vol. 2: Italian Literature; In Two Parts
He deals with the truths of history, resolving to embellish them by art, to extract lessons of utility, to magnify the virtues and the valor of the noblest men, and to inflame his audience with the fire of lofty aspiration. His object, unlike that of the romancer, is essentially serious. He is less anxious to produce a work of pure beauty than to raise a monument of ideal and moralized sublimity. The heroic-comic poet adopts the tone, style, conduct and machinery of the heroic manner; but he employs his art on some trivial or absurd subject, making his ridicule of baseness and pettiness the more pungent by the mock-gravity of his treatment. Unlike the burlesque writer, he does not aim at mere scurrility. There is always method in his buffoonery, and a satiric purpose in his parody. The satirist strikes more directly; he either attacks manners, customs, institutions, and persons without disguise, or he does so under a thin veil of parable. He differs from the heroic-comic poet chiefly in this, that he does not array himself in the epical panoply. Within the range of Italian literature we find ready examples of these several styles. Boiardo and Arioso are romantic poets. The Morgante Maggiore is a romance with considerable elements of burlesque and satire mingled. Tasso's Gerusalemme Liberata is a fair specimen of the heroic, and Tassoni's Secchia Rapita of the heroic-comic species. The Ricciardetto of Fortiguerri and Folengo's Orlandino represent burlesque, while Casti's Animali Parlanti is a narrative satire.
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