L'isotopia di Baia negli «Hendecasyllaborum libri» di Pontano

The Hendecasyllaborum libri would seem to have been composed at different times, but not in a long period of time, probably in the decade 1490-1500, significant years for Pontano, who found himself facing the mourning of his beloved wife Adriana and witnessing the descent of Charles VIII to Naples. Faced with the advance of history, the fragmentation of affections and the reality of the court, Pontano set up a «sozialerotische Utopie» with the thermal baths of Baia as a privileged setting, a place of worldly retreat and pleasures. For this reason, the title as proposed by Summonte identifies what Enrico Testa would define as the two «generators of coherence» of the canzoniere: the metrical choice, which privileges the phalaecius endecasyllable, and the Baia setting. The endecasyllable builds a refined bridge with the classical auctores, Catullus and Martial, while Baia, rather than a tangible setting, is a ‘poetic place’ to which all the scenes variously depicted by Pontano can be linked by metonymic contiguity, provided that eroticism and widespread voluptas appear present and pervasive.