"Filosofando e vagando per lo gran mare della sua essenzia". Testi e temi della filosofia e della trattatistica d'amore nel Rinascimento

The extensive and variegated production of works on love topics triggered by Ficino's translation of Plato's Symposium represents a philosophi- cal-literary phenomenon of great importance. However, between the mid-sixteenth century and the early seventeenth century, in addition to treatises of considerable theoretical depth, there is a proliferation of works in which the themes that had con- stituted the theoretical cornerstone of this hybrid genre, at the intersection between philosophy and literature, are gradually losing momentum. The love discourse then became one of the issues to discuss with a display of erudition and rhetorical tal- ent, that is, proving to be able to compose infinite variations on the Platonic-Ficinian 'truth', without essentially distancing oneself from the latter. This section presents six essays relating to aspects of this cultural debate, at least partially yielding the complex- ity of this heterogeneous and multiform panorama.