On Kissing and Sighing : Renaissance Homoerotic Love from Ficino's De Amore and Sopra Lo Amore to Cesare Trevisani's L'impresa (1569)

A. Maggi

This essay investigates the homoerotic connotations present in the so-called treatises on love, a popular philosophical and literary genre of the Italian Renaissance. The referential text of this sixteenthcentury genre is Marsilio Ficino's De amore (1484), a deeply innovative interpretation of Plato's Symposium. Focusing on the initial section of Ficino's text, Maggi highlights some important structural differences between the De amore and the Symposium. Moreover, by comparing Ficino's Latin text with his own subsequent Italian translation (Sopra lo amore, 1544), Maggi examines how Ficino interprets some key terms such as 'appearance' and 'splendor.' The second part of the essay studies Cesare Trevisani's L'impresa (1569), a later treatise on love with an explicit homoerotic foundation.[Copies are available from: Haworth Document Delivery Center. The Haworth Press, Inc., 10 Alice Street, Binghamton, NY 13904-1580, USA]