Pulci and Ficino : rethinking the Morgante (Cantos XXIV-XXV)

Abstract

Pulci’s poetry represents the apogee of the Florentine comic realist tradition in the fifteenth century. His poem Morgante, a mock-version of stories from the Matter of France, was written over more than twenty years (1461-1483) and deals with a variety of topics, including the philosophy of Marsilio Ficino and Ficino himself, who is allegorically concealed within one of the characters. The controversies that surrounded Pulci are of great interest. This article focuses on one particular part of Pulci’s life and work, his dispute with Marsilio Ficino. The interpretation proposed in the pages below is that a section (Cantos XXIV-XXV) of the Morgante should be regarded as an experimental phase in which Pulci, before his dispute with Ficino, sought to write a heroic poem inspired by Ficino’s Neoplatonic philosophy. After the rupture with Ficino, Pulci began depicting him, from Canto XXVI to Canto XXVIII, as the evil King Marsilione. The first part of this article untangles the different threads that are woven in this enigma and suggests a new dating for Cantos XXIV and XXV; the second part deals with the content of this section of the Morgante, which contains philosophical digressions. In the conclusion, I suggest a new chronology of the events happened between 1473 and 1483.