The persistence of a geopolitical dialectic between center and periphery in North Italian courts, and the sixteenth-century outpouring of religious concerns often channeled through crypto-Protestant works, seems to have made of Teofilo Folengo’s life a quintessentially heterodox experience, in its unstable pendulum from Benedictine engagements, through a professional season as a hired pen in Venice’s early modern “public sphere” in print, to a largely legendary pursuit of meanderings and carnal dissipations. Indeed, Folengo’s career as a writer offers almost a template for exuberant rebellion, provincial eccentricities and the fiery literary resistance that it is now customary to associate with the reception of an Italian questione della lingua. However, although Folengo himself would have probably accepted the role of “founder” and “creator” of a new type of macaronic poetry quite happily, his poetic trajectory can hardly...
1298 words
Citation: Gulizia, Stefano. "Teofilo Folengo". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 14 October 2010 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=12756, accessed 10 December 2025.]
