Sannazaro and Arcadia.

Kennedy, William J.

Benedetto Croce notwithstanding, the interest of our passing century in the Neapolitan Renaissance has rarely percolated at lively speed. Its literary star was Jacopo Sannazaro, but his elegant output in both Latin and Italian remains more of a name known to all than a text read even by a few. Carol Kidwell has clearly performed a labor of love in retracing Sannazaro's life and times, surveying his work with an appreciative eye, and recounting her enthusiasm in a highly readable yet scholarly and well documented book.

Kidwell follows the historical trajectory of Sannazaro's poetry with a detailed account of the composition of each of his major texts. Besides synthesizing most of the current scholarship, she provides her own informative insights into the circumstances of Sannazaro's creative production. She offers nuanced (though unsystematic) remarks about its artistic effect. And most engagingly she presents many of her own translations of key passages and short poems. The early Arcadia comes first in order of presentation, followed by a richly detailed account of Naples' political turmoil in succeeding years, and eventually of Sannazaro's return to his pastoral narrative. The poet's mature Latin elegies and epigrams and his Petrarchan Italian lyrics receive sensitive and sympathetic treatment. Kidwell conveys genuine enthusiasm about Sannazaro's short Latin epic on Jesus's nativity, De partu virginis, and she gives a good sample of its aureate but elegant style in accomplished English renditions. The book closes with an account of the social and historical changes affecting Naples in Sannazaro's declining years.

Kidwell offers a long scholarly bibliography of works in six languages, after demonstrating throughout the book that she has done her research very well indeed. Forty-five pages of detailed notes examine most of the available materials on every important issue. A special treat is seventy-five photographs and reproductions of geographical locales, relevant artifacts, and contemporaneous art. The book is a pleasure to read and it offers a feast for the eyes. And for the uninitiated it may stimulate deserved interest in a long neglected author and his cultural milieu.

WILLIAM J. KENNEDY Cornell University