The late poetry of Michelangelo and 16th century s religious crisis

• Grant number: 13/06655-9
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Start date: February 01, 2014
• End date: January 21, 2015
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Literature - Modern Foreign Literatures
• Principal Investigator: Lucia Wataghin
• Grantee: Leandro Vinícius Miranda Cauneto
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Michelangelo Buonarroti (Florence, 1475 - Rome, 1564) was the author of a vast poetic work, written in the course of almost all his life, alongside with his other artistic activities. Better known, in the past, mainly for its expressive and documental qualities, Michelangelo's poetry has been subjected, in recent times, to a wide critical review, whose purpose is to reevaluate it in its poetical and formal aspects. In this context, the problem of his late poetry emerges as a fundamental one, as it drastically distinguishes itself from all his previous works. In fact, a great part of his first poetry is devoted to love themes, and its main style feature is the taste for formal difficulty. In his late years, however, Michelangelo would commit his verses almost exclusively to religious themes, alongside with a radical style simplification. Recent studies tried to understand this phenomenon, relating it mainly to the 16th century religious crisis, which implied, to a certain extent, the crisis of artistic and poetic forms, as well as Renas-cence's ethical values. After contacting new religious ideas, many of reformist content (whose possible sources would be Vittoria Colonna and the spirituali circle of Juan de Valdés), Michelangelo had proposed a whole new set of poetic values, taking new paths with his compositions. In this sense, Michelangelo's late poetry acquires a deeper meaning if looked against his work as a whole - presenting itself, at one time, as a review of poetic tradition and of his own early writings, thus reflecting the crisis of humanist values in the first half of the 16th century.

Academic Publications

(References retrieved automatically from State of São Paulo Research Institutions)

CAUNETO, Leandro Vinícius Miranda. Michelangelo Buonarroti\'s late poetry and the religious crisis of the 16th century. 2016. Master's Dissertation - Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH/SBD) São Paulo.