<i>Patrizi e Rabelais: un giudizio dimenticato</i>

Abstract

In view of the scarcity of any acknowledgment of Rabelais' work in the Italian Cinquecento, a mention by Francesco Patrizi da Cherso in his Della Poetica takes on particular significance. This mention contains a judgment as well, and classifies the Gargantua-Pantagruel among the comic works but not among those which cause "meraviglia". Perhaps Patrizi read Rabelais's work in Ferrara at the time he was teaching philosophy there and where he wrote the "deca mirabile" where the mention appears. Rabelais was a writer watched with suspicion by the Inquisition , but perhaps his name was known in Ferrara through the mediation of Renata di Francia.