Jacopo Mazzoni - Major Works

Major Works

Though Mazzoni considered himself primarily a philosopher (Adams, 178), his major work of philosophy – an attempt to reconcile the theories of Plato and Aristotle called De Triplici Hominum Vita, Activa Nempe, Contemplativa, et Religiosa Methodi Tres (On the Three Ways of Man’s Life: the Active, the Contemplative, and the Religious, published in 1576) – is not widely read. Mazzoni is most known for his work on literary criticism, particularly his defenses of Dante’s Divine Comedy, Discorso in Difesa Della Commedia Della Divino Poeta Dante (The Discourse in Defense of the Comedy of the Divine Poet Dante), published in 1572 and a second effort, Della Difesa Della Comedia Di Dante (On the Defense of the Comedy of Dante), which was not published until 1688.

Mazzoni was originally asked to write the defense by a noble friend who was distressed at criticism being leveled at the Divine Comedy by Castravilla. Mazzoni’s initial volume on the subject (In Defense of the Comedy of the Divine Poet Dante), which he claims was written in only 20 days, attracted criticism for its sometimes vague reasoning and its tendency, at times, to simply contradict, rather than refute, Dante’s detractors.

In response to criticisms that contemporaries such as Belisario Bulgarini leveled against his first effort, Mazzoni wrote the more extensive and more sophisticated On the Defense of the Comedy of Dante. In this work, before directly addressing Dante’s work, Mazzoni develops his theory of poetics, in which, drawing heavily from Plato and Aristotle, he discusses mimesis, the role of poetry, and the definition of poetry versus poetics (see Theory section, below). Though no complete English translation of Mazzoni’s text exists, excerpts from the Introduction and Summary have appeared in some anthologies, as well as in a partial translation by Robert L. Montgomery.