Appunti per una prima lettura del "povero libretto" di Gaspara Stampa

The recent publication of Pietrasanta edition of the Rime of Gaspara Stampa (1554) provides an opportunity to read them safe from manipulations operated by Salza, who substantially redistributed them by drawing a path of repentance. This contribution proposes an interpretation of Stampa’s 'canzoniere', beginning with the dedication to Collaltino Collalto, which is not an accessory and external part, but an integral one, with a definitional and programmatic value. The collection has not a narrative structure or a story to tell: it was built by continuos addition of thematic and linguistic sections, which ensure a horizontal and circular development. These pages offer some examples, showing that this process organizes the structure of the whole book. In this way the itinerarium traced by Petrarch is distorted, Stampa’s «booklet», with its ‘paratactic’ structure, shares the dissolution of the 'canzoniere' model and is rather a 'book of poems', a type imposing itself as early as the fourth decade of the sixteenth century.