This volume is divided into two main parts. The first one analyzes Pietro Bembo’s theory of language and of poetry through a thorough reading of his Prose della volgar lingua (1525) and of his Rime (1530). The second part is devoted to a study of the anthologies of lyrical poetry produced within some Italian academies over the course of the Cinquecento. The volume offers a useful contribution to the studies on Renaissance lyric poetry, while also providing precious insights into the world of Italian academies. Matching close readings of the texts with careful overviews of Renaissance theories of language and poetry, this study will prove beneficial to both scholars of the Italian Renaissance (experienced scholars and PhD students alike), and to scholars of rhetoric and poetry in general.

The first section engages with Bembo’s treatises and poetry exploring the discrepancy between the tenets expressed by Bembo in the Prose and his own poetic production. In his Rime, Bembo seems, in fact, to undermine some of his own rules concerning the imitation of Petrarca, also in the light of a poetic based on the idea of superatio. The analysis of Bembo’s Rime is noteworthy and covers their metrical and lexical peculiarities, as well as their motifs: of special interest is the analysis of the recourse to scriptural elements as well as that of the Dantesque presence. Oberto explores the often underestimated differences between Bembo’s and Petrarch’s poetry, and the cracks in the otherwise compact system of Bembian imitation. These cracks open the path to new models of poetry later in the century.

The second section deals with the anthologies of lyric poetry produced within Italian academies. Although recent scholarship has shown a renewed interest in this topic, our knowledge of academies is still insufficient. The core of this section is divided into three chapters, each devoted to a specific case study: the Accademia degli Argonauti (Mantua), the Accademia degli Occulti (Brescia), and the Accademia degli Svegliati (Naples). Although the latter did not produce a collective collection of poems, Oberto analyzes the Rime by its leader, Giulio Cesare Cortese (published in 1588 and 1592), on the assumption that it is representative of the theoretical strands of the academy. Each of the chapters is divided into the same six paragraphs (with a partial exception for the third), devoted respectively to the structure of each collection of poems: their motifs, their language and style, their use of Dante, the position of the academy toward Bembo’s theories, and the implicit poetic of academy’s cultural program. This fixed structure facilitates comparisons between the case studies and allows for the assessment of the peculiarities of each anthology, and its position within the panorama of sixteenth-century lyric poetry. Oberto analyzes in depth the content of these collections, as well as the presence of Petrarchan and Petrarchist words, rhymes, expressions, and metrical forms within. The result is a remarkable demonstration of how such production becomes increasingly unacceptable in the light of Bembo’s program and its emphasis on formal matters. The lyric poetry produced within Italian academies fills the empty space of subject matter with new doctrinal contents such as science (in the case of the Academy of the Argonauti), philosophy, and religious as well as obscene themes (Cortese). This results in the undermining of Bembismo, and in “a process of disintegration of Petrarchism” (358). The superficial respect of Bembo’s model (from the linguistic and technical, i.e., metrical point of view) is, in fact, enriched with the recourse to Dante and to authors excluded from the canon of the Prose. As Oberto aptly suggests, Petrarchism can only be saved as far as it works in the service of its new doctrinal content or, in other words, toward the poeticizing of an otherwise hard philosophical or scientific matter (357).

It would probably have been advisable to offer a slightly more nuanced view of the opposition between Bembo’s model and the alternative choices later pursued by individual authors or academies. Little space is devoted to the different strains of Petrarchist poetry and to those authors who challenged Bembo’s views in the first decades of the century (Pietro Aretino, Antonio Brocardo, Bernardo Tasso). However, this rich and insightful book eloquently shows the erosion of Bembo’s model of poetry along the Cinquecento and the rise of a new style of poetry.