Lifting the Curse of Luigi da Porto: On the Life and Legacy of a 15th-Century Italian Poet

I first became infatuated with Luigi da Porto, a warrior-poet from 15th century Italy in 2001, when I went to live in Verona. I’d just completed my Creative Writing masters at UEA, and, young and low on life-experience, was on the hunt for a story. It was not the most thought-through plan. I ended up working as a receptionist in an internet café during the day, and in the evenings, I’d skulk the cobbled streets of Verona, as if by lurking in the shadows of Romeo and Juliet’s city, I would miraculously find the material for a brilliant novel, some kind of a play on a love story. Instead, I found Luigi da Porto, who became the basis for not one novel but two, and a lifelong fascination. In 1524, seventy years before Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet , Luigi da Porto published Historia Novellamente Ritrovata di Due Nobili Amanti (“newly found story of two noble lovers”)—or as it was referred to in shorthand, La Giulietta . It was more short story than novella, a condensed version of the tale we all know: Romeo and Juliet from two warring noble families in Verona meet at a party and fall in love. There’s a cousin, Tybalt, who kills his best friend Mercutio, as well as a nurse and an elopement and the same tragic end in which the young lovers needlessly kill themselves. But what struck me even more than how entirely Shakespeare had lifted the story from his source material was Luigi da Porto’s epilogue, in which he bemoaned the lack of “Juliets” amongst women today. Women, he lamented, were disloyal and fickle, their hearts changing according to the fortunes of their lovers. How extraordinary, I thought, that the narrative inspiring the greatest love story of all time seemed to be written in a state of bitterness and anger towards women. What was that all about? The main source for the most famous love story of time had been written as an act of vengeance. A little digging revealed Luigi had written it from a villa just outside Vicenza. […]

Click here to view original page at Lifting the Curse of Luigi da Porto: On the Life and Legacy of a 15th-Century Italian Poet

© 2024, wcadmin. All rights reserved, Writers Critique, LLC Unless otherwise noted, all posts remain copyright of their respective authors.