Carlo de' Dottori explained

Carlo de' Dottori
Birth Date:1618 10, df=y
Birth Place:Padua, Republic of Venice
Death Place:Padua, Republic of Venice
Alma Mater:University of Padua
Children:4
Module:
Embed:yes
Language:Italian language
Pseudonym:Eleuterio Dularete
Notableworks:Aristodemo
L'Asino
Confessioni di Eleuterio Dularete

Carlo de' Dottori (pronounced as /it/; 9 October 1618 – 23 July 1686) is an Italian writer, best remembered for his autobiographical Confessioni and his tragedy Aristodemo, considered by Benedetto Croce one of the masterpieces of Italian Baroque literature.[1]

Biography

Carlo de' Dottori was born in 1618 in Padua of a noble family. We know very little about his early life or education except for what he himself has to say in his works. Dottori received a thorough classical education. He attended the University of Padua, but he never completed his formal studies.

He held several posts in different cultural-political Paduan institutions and frequented the Accademia Galileiana, the most important Paduan academy of his time, of which he became a member in 1645. He was elected four times as Principe of the academy, in 1649, 1670, 1675, and 1677. During the 1650s, he made various efforts to obtain the protection to and patronage of some important figures outside the domain of the Republic of Venice. He spent most of his life as a court poet under the patronage of Eleonora Gonzaga, Christina of Sweden, and Leopold of Austria. He died at Padua in 1686. In his last years he composed a book of memoirs entitled Confessioni di Eleuterio Dularete, published posthumously (Venice, G. Albrizzi, 1696). In a memoria read before the Academy of Padua on June 5, 1792, Giuseppe Gennari spoke at length and admiringly of Dottori's life and works. This same memoria was then published, in a somewhat enlarged form, as a preface to an edition of LAsino which appeared in 1796.

Works

Dottori's first work is the novel Alfenore, which he wrote when he was only twenty. It is a hybrid sort of composition, revealing the influence of all the main trends of the time as well as the inexperience of the writer. Dottori's most famous work is the tragedy Aristodemo. Aristodemo is a tragedy in verse, which found its inspiration and its models in classical authors, especially Euripides. First performed in Padua on 31 May 1655, the play was published in 1643, and maintained a rather high rank on the Italian stage until the eighteenth century. Dottori also published, in 1643, Rime e Canzoni, which attained a second edition in 1689; and in 1652 he published the mock-heroic epos L'Asino (The donkey), which was lastingly successful. L'Asino is a mock-heroic poem, that is a satirical composition in "ottava rima" according to the well-established tradition of the seventeenth century. A comparison with Tassoni's La secchia rapita seems unavoidable at this point. The resemblance is strong but limited to external elements such as the thin historical basis common to both poems. In the case of L'Asino this basis goes back to the medieval struggle between Padua and Vicenza for the possession of a flag bearing the image of a jackass. Internally Dottori's poem differs significantly from Tassoni's. The bitterness and personal resentment of the latter are missing in L'Asino where the satirical mood is definitely benign. Dottori corresponded with Angelico Aprosio, and probably assisted in his Bibliotheca; he also exchanged letters on scientific subjects with Francesco Redi.

List of works

Notes

  1. Benedetto Croce, Storia dell’età barocca in Italia (Bari 1929), pp.248–253; and his critical edition (Florence 1948). Giovanna Da Pozzo, ‘Rassegna di studi su Carlo de’ Dottori 1985–1990’ in Giornale Storico della Letteratura Italiana 109 (1992), pp. 95–127.

Bibliography

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