Apocalypse and/or Metamorphosis: Chronographia and Topographia in Petrarch’s Sestina XXII and Tullia D’aragona’s Sestina LV

Tullia d’Aragona (1510–1556) is a poet whose work is only now being edited, translated into English, and subjected to critical analysis. While earlier nineteenth-century criticism focused disproportionately on the biographical aspects of the life of this courtesan poet, late twentieth-century critics grapple with theoretical language on the subject of women writing in the Petrarchan tradition: self-betrayal or self-fashioning? What is the role of gender, if any, when a female poet engages with the Petrarchan tradition? A close reading of two poems is used to elucidate larger issues, such as canon formation and marginality. While Petrarch’s sestina ends with the use of the impossibility topos and focuses upon his own death, the closing lines of Tullia d’Aragona’s sestina juxtapose cosmic apocalypse and the force of individual love. The analysis partakes of Ann Jones’s cultural studies approach and utilizes Thomas Greene’s theory of Renaissance imitation, specifically in the dialectical or heuristic mode.