Aristotele tra Dante e Petrarca: la ricezione della 'Poetica' nelle lezioni di Giambattista Gelli all'Accademia Fiorentina

Along with the exegesis of Dante’s opus and the debate about the Horatian theme of ut pictura poesis, the Florentine Academy offered a reception of Aristotle’s Poetics that was unique and peripheral within the context of Late-Renaissance culture. In particular, Gelli’s lectures on Petrarch and Dante show an interpretation of the Poetics that emphasizes ethical issues rather than formal ones. Gelli’s reading pursues forms of representation free of the processes of selection and abstraction typical of the contemporary appropriation of the Aristotelean text. According to Gelli, poetry does not aim to evoke ideal representations of the world, but rather to trigger an emotional response in the reader. Gelli’s position thus focuses more on the issue of reception rather than on the formal aspects of a literary artifact.