Ø Vittoria
Colonna (1492-1547)
Born
into the powerful Roman Colonna clan in 1490 (some sources say 1492), second
child of Fabrizio Colonna and Agnese di Montefeltro, Colonna was betrothed at a
very young age to Francesco Ferrante D'Avalos, the Marquis of Pescara, in a
political manoeuvre that established an alliance between the Colonna and the
Spanish throne of King Ferdinand D'Aragona. The marriage was celebrated in 1509
on the island of Ischia, off the coast of Naples, and the couple briefly
resided together in the Neapolitan countryside before D'Avalos left on the
first of the many military campaigns against the French that
were to occupy him
for the rest of his life. Colonna herself returned to Ischia, to the court
presided over by her aunt by marriage, Costanza D'Avalos, where the
well-stocked library and lively court environment probably helped to encourage
her own literary aspirations.
v successful
woman writer; Colonna, Vittoria
Vittoria
Colonna, certainly the most renowned and successful woman writer of her age in
Italy, was widely admired by her peers for her impeccable Petrarchan verses and
her public image of unimpeachable chastity and piety. Her work went through
numerous sixteenth-century editions, but these tailed off after the 1560s and
subsequent editorial neglect belies her status at the forefront of literary
production by secular women in the Renaissance.
v A
single poetic ‘Epistle to her Husband
A
single poetic ‘Epistle to her Husband” written during his captivity by the
French in 1512. It is all that survives of Colonna poetry from this early
period. However she is cited with enough regularity by contemporary Neapolitan
writers to advocate that her work was already enjoying some significant scribal
publication in and around Naples, if not further.
v A
religious poet woman
Among
the women religious poets, Vittoria Colonna is remarkable for the literary
labour. Vittora Colonna was truly ‘a child of the Renaissance’. She was born at
the house of illustrious parentage. She witnessed and participated in major
historical events. She was an influential political and intellectual leader, a
friend and advised to many of the greatest personality of her age. She was an
outstanding poet admired and respected by almost all the contemporaries. The
Colonna family members were a noble Roman family that played an important
military and political role in the medieval and Renaissance Europe.
v Her
Love Poems:-
Colonna’s
modest prevented the publication of her verses for many year, yet in 1535
Colonna’s first work appeared in print. It was a sonnet I live Upon This Fearful Lonely
Rock. It is considered one of the best of her love poems, intense in
faith and love. She speaks,
“I live upon
this fearful lonely rock
Like a sad bird that shuns the green branch
And the water I withdraw from those
I love on earth and from my self as well.”
This
is the moving and passionate expression of love, devoted for her husband. When
she departed from her husband, she became the lonely lad. In the Epistle to
Fernando Francisco de Avalos, her husband after the battle of wound in 1525 she
writes,
My most noble lord, I write you this
To recount to you how sad and amid so
Uncertain desires and harsh torments I live.
Further she again
state….
“I id not expect pain and sorrow from you
She feels
frustration
Love of my father and love
of you
Like two famished and
furious snakes
Colonna in anger
addressee her husband
“You live happily and know
no sorrow
Thinking only of our newly
acquired fame
You carelessly keep me
hungry for your love
But I with anger and
sadness in my face
Lie in your bend abandoned
and lone
Feeling hope intends to
mingle with pain”
v Literary
Queen of the Italian Renaissance
In
1538, an entire book of Colonna poetry was published Poetry and Letters. It
earned her a title Literary Queen of the Italian Renaissance. She wrote 390
poems into three sections (1) Love poems (2) Spiritual poems (3) Epistolary
poem.
v longing
required by the Petrarchan format
Her husband's almost constant absence
from home, as well as his reputation for valour and heroism in battle, appear
to have provided Colonna with the necessary contexts of loss and longing
required by the Petrarchan format. This was reinforced in 1525, when D'Avalos
died from injuries sustained at the battle of Pavia, and it is no accident that
Colonna's activity and fame as a poet grew exponentially from this date.
Widowed, independently wealthy, and childless, she retreated into a convent in
Rome as a secular guest and resisted all attempts by her family and the pope to
arrange a second marriage. The emphasis in her work on spirituality and the
contemplative life was reinforced by the chaste and pious persona she promoted
publicly, and aided no doubt by her wealth and aristocratic status, she was
able to formulate a literary voice which commanded considerable respect whilst
preserving the necessary gender decorum.
v Petrarchan
linguistic and imitative models
Colonna's poetry is stylistically
impeccable, drawing on the Petrarchan linguistic and imitative models
recommended by Pietro Bembo and others in the period, but also, particularly in
the more mature work, rich, sensuous and innovative in ways that may surprise
the uninitiated reader. Although the earlier, so-called 'amorous' poems are
more traditionally Petrarchan in their emphasis on loss and longing for the
deceased consort, later 'spiritual' sonnets embrace instead a far more positive
celebration of divine love for Christ which is flavoured significantly by the
poet's personal interest in the ideas and doctrines of reform.
No any desire for personal fame
A
first edition of Colonna's Rime was published in 1538, and was followed by
twelve further published editions before the poet's death in 1547. A particular
feature of this publication history is Colonna's personal distance from all
editions of her work that appeared during her lifetime, so that she was able to
maintain that her writing was in no way related to any desire for personal fame
or acclaim (although this claim is perhaps undermined by the large number of
manuscript collections of the sonnets that were also in circulation during the
period). A further nine editions of the Rime were published before the end of
the sixteenth century, when interest in the genre and its practitioners waned.
Since then, attention to the poetry has been sporadic, and serious critical
consideration has often been undermined by the tendency towards overly
biographical readings of these highly stylised and complex verses.
v religious
themes
Colonna's
published work is not limited to poetry. She also composed prose works on
religious themes, initially as letters, but which were later published in
collections of prose meditations and in separate editions. These prose writings
demonstrate clearly her interest in religious reform, as well as a concerted
attempt to define a role for the secular literary female that draws on the
examples of the female 'apostles' who appear in the New Testament and in
traditional hagiographies, most significantly the examples of Mary Magdalene,
Catherine of Alexandria and the Virgin Mar.
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