TANSILLO, LUIGI. - Of a Nola family, and probably born in Nola rather than Venosa, in 1510, he died at Teano on 10 Dec. 1568. A poet, courtier and soldier, he remains one of the most notable and engaging figures in our literary history between the years of Ariosto and those of Tasso. His loyalty to the Spaniards, first in the person of Don Pietro, viceroy of Naples, and then to his son Don Garcia, was a sincere sentiment, and it is not possible to blame him for II.
A poet only in the vernacular, and without a taste for prose, he nevertheless had an eye for literary genres, to which he compared his own works and by which he was sometimes guided by a native popular fervour. From this came his various *stanze*. In the 1831 *stanzas* of the *Ven-demoniator* (written between 1532 and 1534) a purely popular motif is encountered, not only mingled with reminiscences of carnival songs, but also with the Latin of the time; in the 173 *stanzas* of *Clorida* (1547), Ovid’s *Metamorphoses*, even if through a short poem by Bernardino Martirano, help to glorify the garden of Don Pietro di Toledo’s villa and bring the inspiration back within the orbit of idyllic-mythological-encomiastic poetry. Moreover, even the eclogue
TANSILLO, LUIGI
