Teofilo Folengo

Teofilo Folengo ( pseudonyms: Merlin Cocai, Limerno Pitocco, baptismal name. Girolamo Folengo; * 1491 in Mantua, † December 9, 1544 in Campese ( Bassano del Grappa Folengo was Benedictine and one of the main representatives of comic- burlesque, but also religious poetry of the Italian Renaissance.

Life

Folengo was the eighth of nine children of the notary Federico Folengo in Mantua. He attended the school from time to time a priest in Ferrara in 1508 and joined the Convention Eufemia in Brescia as a novice in the Order of the Benedictines. In 1509, he passed from his vows and took the religious name of Teofilo. In the following years he was a member of various monasteries in the Veneto and San Benedetto in Polirone (from 1512), Santa Giustina in Padua, 1515, now as a deacon, the Abbey of Santa Maria in Pomposa, after ordination to the priesthood then the monastery of Santa Maria del Monte at Cesena (since 1517), then again Eufemia (1520 ) and then again Pomposa (up to 1522). During these years he developed along the lines of his Mantua predecessor Tifi Odasi († 1492) have macaroni cal Latin, a literary hybrid language, which he called in allusion to the peasant dish of macaroni as ' macaronesca ars ', and achieves its comic effects by that words from the Italian vernacular and the dialect of the Veneto are integrated with a Latin inflection and prosody into Latin.

Publications

In 1517 he published in Venice under the pseudonym Merlin Cocai and under the title Libri Macaronices the first of four editions of his Opus macaronicum. These included, accompanied by two Eclogues, the hexametric Poem Baldus, a mix of epic, romance and pikarischem novel, which in 17 books, the grotesquely comical adventures of Baldus, a grandson of the French king and descendant of Charlemagne Paladin Guy de Montauban, in the rural world of Cipada at Mantua told. A second expanded, resulting again in Eufemia version was published in 1521 under the title Opus Merlini Toscolano Cocaii poetae mantuani Macaronicorum in which the Baldus was extended to 25 books and the parodic love poetry Zanitonella and the fable Moschaea, about the battle between flies and ants were added. A third version ( Macaronicorum poema ) appeared without date, probably late 1530s - years, with the fictional place of printing Cipada, and a fourth posthumously in 1552 in Venice ( Macaronicorum Poemata ).

Monastic life

After he had moved to the monastery of San Giovanni in Parma ( 1522), it apparently came into conflict with his abbot Ignazio Squarcialupi. 1524 or 1525 Folengo left the monastery, but without taking off his spiritual name and Habit. He settled in Venice and entered as a private tutor of his son in the services of Captain Camillo Orsini, he had to accompany them in the following years at some of his military campaigns. 1526 was published under the pseudonym Limerno Pitocco be Orlandino, a burlesque poem about the knight Roland's youth in the Italian punching. In 1527 he published under the same pseudonym be allegorical and philosophical didactic poem Il caos di Triperuno, one of the most remarkable works of Italian literary history, in which the protagonist " Triperuno " ( " three for one " ) is divided into three persons macaroni cal Latin, classical Latin and the Italian vernacular and speaks a parody of Dante CONTINUED Intiationsreise by three " woods " is, until he is finally redeemed in the encounter with Christ from the "chaos" of his vices and errors.

Beginning of the 1530s - years was the desire for re- admission into the Order, which was in 1534 then granted him by the support of his concern by Federico Gonzaga, after three years of probation and penance as a hermit, which he predominantly in San Pietro in the bay Crapolla graduated in Campania. During this time, appeared in 1533 in Venice his Umanità del Figliuolo di Dio, the first Christian religious epic in Italian punching, the paraphrased the life of Jesus according to the Gospels and became a style modeled on Tasso's Gerusalemme Liberata. In the same year he also published his religious dialogues Pomiliones and the poetry collection Varium poema.

After returning to his Order, he came first in the convent of Sulzano on Lake Iseo. During this time the Hagiomachia, a collection of eighteen Märtyrerviten in Latin hexameters arose. Again, with the support of Gonzaga, who had become in the meantime, Viceroy of Sicily in Palermo, he spent a few years in various convents in Sicily (1538-1542), first to San Martino delle Scale above Monreale near Palermo, then as prior of Santa Maria delle Ciambre Borgetto at Palermo. During this time the Atto della Pinta was a spiritual game about the history of salvation from the creation of the world up to the Annunciation. In addition Folengo began with the unfinished palermitana also a seal of biblical themes in terza rima.

In 1542, he returned to his Venetian home back in the monastery of Santa Croce in Campese, where he died in 1544 while working on the fourth edition of his macaroni between seals.