‘I Take Thee’: Vittoria Colonna, Conjugal Verse and Male poeti colonnesi

Abstract

It is widely known that Vittoria Colonna influenced female love lyricists, as well as spiritual Petrarchists of both genders. Generally unrecognized is the impact her amorous verse had on male love poets. This chapter traces Colonna’s impact via the Petrarchan sub-tradition of ‘conjugal verse’, or poetry for one’s spouse: first on Pietro Bembo; then on Neapolitan widowers in her cultural sphere (Bernardo Tasso, Berardino Rota); and down through a line of husband poets stretching to the early years of the seventeenth century. An examination of this verse lineage expands our understanding of the full extent of Colonna’s authority—and, accordingly, that of Italian women writers more broadly, rarely seen as innovators in Renaissance literary movements.