''Gli Asolani'' (the people of

Asolo Asolo () is a town and '' comune'' in the Veneto Region of northern Italy. It is known as "The Pearl of the province of Treviso", and also as "The City of a Hundred Horizons" for its mountain settings. History The town was originally a settlem ...

) are

dialogue Dialogue (sometimes spelled dialog in American and British English spelling differences, American English) is a written or spoken conversational exchange between two or more people, and a literature, literary and theatrical form that depicts suc ...

s in three books written between 1497 and 1504 by

Pietro Bembo Pietro Bembo, ( la, Petrus Bembus; 20 May 1470 – 18 January 1547) was an Italian scholar, poet, and literary theorist who also was a member of the Knights Hospitaller, and a cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church. As an intellectual of the ...

in the language of

Petrarch Francesco Petrarca (; 20 July 1304 – 18/19 July 1374), commonly anglicized as Petrarch (), was a scholar and poet of early Renaissance Italy, and one of the earliest humanists. Petrarch's rediscovery of Cicero's letters is often credited ...

and comprise his first important work. Although he had shown a copy to

Lucrezia Borgia Lucrezia Borgia (; ca-valencia, Lucrècia Borja, links=no ; 18 April 1480 – 24 June 1519) was a Spanish-Italian noblewoman of the House of Borgia who was the daughter of Pope Alexander VI and Vannozza dei Cattanei. She reigned as the Gover ...

in 1503, the first edition from 1505 was published by Aldo Manuzio (Aldus Manutius), and the second edition was published, after various revisions, in 1530. They concern a dialogue on love that is supposed to have happened at

near the court of

Caterina Cornaro Catherine Cornaro ( el, Αικατερίνη Κορνάρο, vec, Catarina Corner) (25 November 1454 – 10 July 1510) was the last monarch of the Kingdom of Cyprus, also holding the titles of the Queen of Jerusalem and Armenia. She was queen ...

Structure and personages

* Libro I – Perottino: the unfortunate lover who expresses love's negativity via psychophysiological analyses – playing on the words ''amore'' (love) and ''amare'' (bitter) "he argues that love is bitter, that all love causes bitterness, and that all bitterness proceeds from love" * Libro II – Gismondo: the fortunate lover who refutes Perottino's thesis by expounding love's positivity * Libro III – Lavinello: who refutes both Perottino and Gismondo by supporting the theory of

Platonic love Platonic love (often lowercased as platonic love) is a type of love in which sexual desire or romantic features are nonexistent or has been suppressed or sublimated, but it means more than simple friendship. The term is derived from the na ...

– contemplating the beautiful ideal present in earthly things; Kidwell summarises this as "In short, good love is that which one can enjoy eternally and bad that which condemns us eternally to grief"

Renaissance renewal of classical humanism

As an ecclesiastic, a writer such as

was not solely interested in temporal pursuits: his perspective was a transcendent one. He is credited with developing the flow-chart like mental associations that illustrate the relationship of law and order, the degree of agreement (or not) in the human soul with virtues' source Divine Love, depicted poetically in

Dante Dante Alighieri (; – 14 September 1321), probably baptized Durante di Alighiero degli Alighieri and often referred to as Dante (, ), was an Italian poet, writer and philosopher. His ''Divine Comedy'', originally called (modern Italian: ' ...

Divine Comedy The ''Divine Comedy'' ( it, Divina Commedia ) is an Italian narrative poem by Dante Alighieri, begun 1308 and completed in around 1321, shortly before the author's death. It is widely considered the pre-eminent work in Italian literature a ...

. God's liberality precedes all moral action, an important aspect to be recalled in critiques of the excesses of the papacy under the Borgia's. The work is dedicated to

, her later notoriety perhaps preventing a wider readership, becoming available in English translation as late as 1954, see below.

Later influences

The romantic poet

Robert Browning Robert Browning (7 May 1812 – 12 December 1889) was an English poet and playwright whose dramatic monologues put him high among the Victorian poets. He was noted for irony, characterization, dark humour, social commentary, historical sett ...

credits Cardinal Bembo with coining the poeticism ''"asolare"'' upon which he based his last work ''"Asolando"'' published posthumously in 1890. Indeed, Bembo's anthropology of human love as divine gift reconciling fallen man to his neighbor (rather than primitive psychological strife in the battle of the sexes) represents an early instance in the development of Christian metaphysics towards an understanding of the experience of human persons in mutual relationship with each other. This romantic or ''conjugal'' meaning of the body as sign of the Transcendent, reflects the mystery of Divine Love found in human sexual love. As

icons An icon () is a religious work of art, most commonly a painting, in the cultures of the Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, and Catholic churches. They are not simply artworks; "an icon is a sacred image used in religious devotion". The most c ...

of the

Trinity The Christian doctrine of the Trinity (, from 'threefold') is the central dogma concerning the nature of God in most Christian churches, which defines one God existing in three coequal, coeternal, consubstantial divine persons: God th ...

, the integral, inseparable nature of the human body and soul reaches its fullest understanding much later in the phenomenological personalism of

Karol Wojtyla Pope John Paul II ( la, Ioannes Paulus II; it, Giovanni Paolo II; pl, Jan Paweł II; born Karol Józef Wojtyła ; 18 May 19202 April 2005) was the head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State from 1978 until his ...

, and his teachings on the theology of the body. His 3-act play The Jeweler's Shop also employs a trio of couples reversing the dramatic order, setting the ''amore'' lovers first with the ''amare'' lovers second, concluding with a couple from the next generation, a plot twist that provides the experiential material that helps resolve their stand-off of positive vs negative

fatalism Fatalism is a family of related philosophical doctrines that stress the subjugation of all events or actions to fate or destiny, and is commonly associated with the consequent attitude of resignation in the face of future events which are t ...

allowing them to cross the threshold of hope. Burt Lancaster and Olivia Hussey starred in a 1989 movie adaptation entitled

La Bottega dell'orefice ''The Jeweller's Shop'' ( it, La bottega dell'orefice) is a 1988 Italian-Austrian-Canadian-German drama film based on ''The Jeweler's Shop'', a play written by Karol Józef Wojtyła (Pope John Paul II) and scripted by Jeff Andrus, starring Burt ...

References

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External links

{{wikisourcelang, it, Asolani, Gli Asolani Asolani