Half-Serious Rhymes: The Narrative Poetry of Luigi Pulci

Byron, in Don Juan, called Pulci (1432A?A?A?A+/-84) A?A?A?A sire of the half-serious rhymeA?A?A?A-, and modelled his style on PulciA?A?A?A-s major work, the Morgante. The phrase identifies the ambivalent quality of PulciA?A?A?A-s verse, which was his distinctive legacy to the A?A?A?A romantic epicA?A?A?A- of the renaissance, a genre he effectively initiated. Half-Serious Rhymes examines the nature of that ambivalence, tracing its origins in the circumstances in which Pulci wrote and the conflicting expectations of his audience at a time of rapid cultural change; more generally, it seeks to increase our understanding of PulciA?A?A?A-s poetic technique, which inevitably brings it into the debate about his relation to and use of his sources (most conspicuously the anonymous Orlando Lauren-Ziano).