The Poetics of Patronage

This study examines the system and poetics of literary patronage in the Renaissance by presenting a comprehensive analysis of the poetry of Giannantonio Campano. In this way, it addresses two themes largely overlooked by modern scholarship. Most studies of literary patronage focus on antiquity, the Middle Ages, or on England during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. If Renaissance patronage is considered at all, the focus is almost exclusively on social and political networks or on the visual arts. In spite of this, literary patronage in fact forms a crucial context for our understanding of the work and careers of Renaissance writers like Campano. By analysing Campano's poetry in relation to his various patronage relationships, this study also offers the first comprehensive introduction to his poetic oeuvre. His poems not only shed light on his own patronage relationships with important Renaissance princes such as Pope Pius II and Federico da Montefeltro, but also revive and appropriate the ancient literary patronage discourse found in the poetry of Horace, Ovid, Martial, and other classical writers. This study not only focuses on the social function of Campano's poetry, therefore, but also explores its distinct literary character.