Francesco Patrizi

Born on Cherso, in Dalmatia, in 1529, Patrizi showed himself to be a brilliant student in Padua and Venice, and by 1553 had already published a collection of prose that opened with Città felice. After his Eridano, an epic published in Ferrara in 1557 in which he used lines of thirteen syllables each, he moved to Venice where he was one of the leading lights in the short-lived Accademia della Fama. At this point he met Tasso, who was with his father Bernardo at the time. In spite of his numerous publications (including his dialogues on history in 1560 and ten dialogues on rhetoric in 1562), in 1561 he left Venice, working for many years in an administrative capacity in Cyprus. It was the offer of a chair in Platonic philosophy at Ferrara by Alfonso II that put him in touch with Tasso once more. His ongoing critique against Aristotelian philosophy was set out not only in his Discussiones peripateticae (1581) but also in a text from 1585 with which he entered the debate surrounding the Liberata, siding with the Furioso. Although devoid of any personal acrimony, his contribution provoked an embittered response from Tasso. Patirizi’s Parere had in fact aimed at arguing against the normative validity of the Poetics, but ended up demolishing the theoretical basis of the Liberata. The following year, 1586, Patrizi published his Della Poetica, also anti-Aristotelian in standpoint, with an appendix entitled the Trimerone ... in risposta alle osservazioni fatte da Torquato Tasso al parer suo scritto in difesa dell’Ariosto. Their antagonism was intense during this time, but dissolved in the early 1590s at the Aldobrandini Court, with Patrizi having produced his major work expressing admiration of Plato, the Nova de universis philosophia (1591), and Tasso intent on finalizing both the Conquistata and the Mondo creato.