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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
It was at the request of Lucrezia Tornabuoni, wife of Piero de' Medici and mother of Lorenzo, that Pulci undertook the writing of the Morgante, the first of the four great Italian epics. For Cantos i–xxiii he followed closely, in general, the plot of the fourteenth-century cantastorie epic Orlando; but in the portion of the poem beginning with Stanza 112 of Canto xviii and ending with Stanza 155 of Canto xix he introduced a famous episode of his own invention, the episode of the picaresque demi-giant Margutte. Lucrezia died on 25 March, 1482. The poem was first published, before her death, in a form consisting of Cantos i–xxiii only. The editions published after her death have five additional cantos.
1 “Del tempo in cui fu scritto il ‘Morgante’”, Rassegna emiliana, ii (1890), 550–554. His arguments are repeated in a second article, “Note critiche sul ‘Morgante’”, La biblioteca dette scuole classiche italiane, vi (1894), 263–266; and in the Introd. to his Il Morgante: stanze scelte e commentate (Florence, 1927).
2 This opinion is stated, without argument, in the Introd. to Volpi's edition of the Morgante, 3 vols. (Florence, 1900–01).
3 C. Carnesecchi, “Per la biografia di Luigi Pulci”, Archivio storico italiano, Ser. v, xvii (1896), 371–379.
4 Lettere di Luigi Pulci a Lorenzo il Magnifico e ad altri, ed. S. Bongi (Lucca, 1886), p. 79.
5 Volpi, as in n. 1; S. von Arx, “Alcune notizie intorno alla prima edizione del ‘Morgante’”, Giornale storico della letteratura italiana, l (1907), 347–353; C. Pellegrini, Luigi Pulci, l'uomo e l'artista (Pisa, 1912), p. 28; N. Zingarelli, “La composizione del ‘Morgante’ di Luigi Pulci”, in his Scritti di varia lelteratura (Milan, 1935), p. 474; A. Pellizzari, “I tre Morganti”, in Scritti vari dedicati a Mario Armanni (Milan, 1938), p. 229; Il Morgante, episodi scelti e ricollegati, ed. Pellegrini (Cernusco sul Naviglio, 1945), p. 26. I. Bussani, Il romanzo cavalleresco in Luigi Pulci (Turin, 1933), pp. 156–159, accepts the letter of 4 Dec. 1470 as indicating that some form of the Morgante was finished at that time, but thinks that the form in question ended with the death of Morgante, the account of which is completed in xx.57. It may well be that Pulci paused for a time at this point; but evidence to be presented in the following section of this study will indicate that it is probable that some of the last stanzas of Canto xix were written in 1471.
6 It may be noted in this connection that after Lorenzo's tournament of 7 Feb. 1469, Pulci undertook to write a poem about it, and that that poem was still unfinished in 1474 (Lettere, p. 141).
7 Stanza 171, ll. 4 and 7–8, and stanzas 172–173, G. Fatini ed., 2 vols. (Turin, 1948).
8 As to the meaning of these lines Volpi says, in his second article and again in his Stanze scelle, “è certo che la frase gittare informa fu adoprata nel senso di stampare coi tipi mobili, e Orlando vuol dire: Questo segreto è come se fosse divulgato per la stampa.” His note ad loc. in his edition of the Morgante is this: “Orlando domanda: Da chi ha saputo questo segreto che pare divulgato come fosse stampato? (gittato in forma).” Fatini's note is this: “gittato in forma, stampato; pare che lo abbia appreso da un libro stampato.” The phrase “gittare in forma” is used in the same sense in the title of the first extant Florentine edition of the Morgante and the colophon of the second (see Pellizzari, pp. 232 and 246); also in an entry of the Diario of the Ripoli press for 9 June 1483 (see Emilia Nesi, Il diario della stamperia di Ripoli [Florence, 1903], p. 93). For uses of the same phrase in the same sense by Matteo Franco and by Politian see the Dictionary of the Crusca, s.v. “forma”, lx. Before the invention of printing the phrase had been used of metal casting: see the same dictionary, s.v. “gettare”, cix. “Gittare” by itself is used in the same sense in an entry of the Ripoli Diario for 19 Oct. 1480 (Miss Nesi, p. 46).
9 Catalogue of Books Printed in the XVth Century Now in the British Museum, Part vi (London, 1930), pp. xii–xiv and 615–624; and Miss Nesi. The Florentine year began on 25 March, so that the period which would commonly be called 1 Jan.–24 March 1478 would be called, in Florentine style, 1 Jan.–24 March 1477. It may be noted here that the Venetian legal year began on 1 March. All dates, in the rest of this article, are in common style.
10 Many books in Italian published in the 15th century have no colophons. Of those that do have colophons the great majority express the idea of printing by the use of some Latin or Italian form or derivative of “imprimere.” The only other verb so used to any considerable extent is “stampare.” Among the colophons examined in the B.M. Catalogue there are one, two, or three instances each of the use of “aere premere”, “scribere”, “transcribere”, “improntare”, and “fare”; and there are two cases of the use of the Latin “formare”, both in books printed in Florence by the Ripoli press.
11 G. Reichenbach, Matteo Maria Boiardo (Bologna, 1929), p. 134. Attention was first called to this passage (without quotation) by A. Luzio and R. Renier in their “Niccolò da Correggio”, Giornale storico della lelteratura italiana, xxi (1893), 212, n. 2.
12 Op. cit., pp. 229–234.
13 “Sul titolo del poema pulciano”, Ital., xxvi (1949), 50–51.
14 In his Luigi Pulci, p. 246.