Italian Bookshelf (download as PDF) - Ibiblio

460 “Italian Bookshelf.” Annali d’italianistica 25 (2007)
man of action), and how he and other men in the Renaissance expressed their sexuality
and personal agency.
The first chapter strikes at the heart of previous studies by Foucault and, to a lesser
extent, Greenblatt, by asking if persons experienced an authentic, interior sexual identity
in the Renaissance. Ruggiero does not take on these scholars in a systematic approach,
but instead smartly sticks to Renaissance texts to argue the existence and complexity of
Renaissance sexual identity. Reading Aretino’s Dialogues, Ruggiero argues that
Aretino’s interlocutor Nanna confesses an internal sexual identity of “whore” and that she
takes on the profession of prostitute in order to be honest, thus matching her internal
identity with an external one (23). Ruggiero thus finds in the Renaissance a co-existence
of interior identity and external consensus realities, which lead to the tricky claim of a
person’s authenticity. This understanding of a self who negotiates authenticity is woven
throughout the book, and, in this chapter specifically, Ruggiero is building his case to
dive into the troubled waters of Renaissance homosexuality. He finds his ally in Michael
Rocke’s studies on sexual practices in Renaissance Florence. He uses Rocke’s research to
conclude that though there was no modern hetero/homo sexual divide in the Renaissance,
there was an “ideal path” of sexuality: male-male sexual activity in youth, which
transitioned to heterosexual behavior in a man’s thirties. In Aretino’s comedy The
Marescalco, he argues, there exists an internal and external Renaissance homosexual
identity of a male character. He states that the homosexual practices of the young
Giannicco follow a typical Renaissance rite of passage, yet the homosexual preferences
of the older lead stable-master “become his social identity—a consensus reality” (29).
The stable-master internally identifies as preferring males and is perceived in society as a
man who willfully engages in homosexual practices. Ruggiero thus has taken Rocke’s
work to the next and, as I see it, obvious conclusion—effectively claiming that though it
was characteristically a Renaissance one, there was a notion of homosexuality and
homosexual identity in the Renaissance.
The claims made about homosexual identity in the first chapter are possibly the
boldest in the entire book and are strikingly unexpected, given the book’s title, which
suggests a narrower monograph about Machiavelli in love (with women). The
groundbreaking importance of the book, as I see it, is in Ruggiero’s ability to synthesize
notions of masculinity and sexuality as concomitant identity categories where
Machiavelli is but one subject among many. Ruggiero provides a clear understanding of
male rites of passage in the Renaissance: the place of “illicit” sex in gioventù for men,
women’s brief adolescence versus men’s, and the rule of reason and “regime of virtù” in
male adulthood. These historical life-stages then inform his readings of texts such as
Machiavelli’s correspondence and theatre, which betray the political thinker as an older
man confessing his unreasonable passions. And by chapter five, the chapter devoted to
Machiavelli, Ruggiero is able to claim that sexual identity and virtù combine in
unexpected ways to form a new idea of Renaissance masculinity. In an eloquent homage
to human contradictions, Ruggiero argues that Machiavelli tries to “recreate” himself as a
“passionate lover and warm comrade as well as a man of honor and virtù ― a rather
contradictory blend of reason and passion, morality and immorality, playfulness and
seriousness, discipline and lack of discipline which created a positive masculine identity
in the Renaissance and help a man win the power and influence that Machiavelli still so
clearly wanted” (162).