Overview

Phileto's Story (c. 1520) is a love tale that starts in Renaissance Verona and then moves across the entire Mediterranean basin. It describes a young man's fascination with the beautiful Euphrosyne, his forceful seduction of her, how his lust soon turns to love, and how that love leads to conflict, death, and banishment. As he travels around the Mediterranean in search of safety, Phileto faces the dangers of shipwreck, negotiates with other cultures, survives the perils of dangerous missions, benefits from the strength of friendships, suffers the pain of homesickness, and copes with the tragic suicide of a female friend before he can finally return to Verona and reunite with his beloved Euphrosyne. In this coming-of-age story we see Phileto eschew inept romanticism (unlike young Romeo in Shakespeare's play) and adopt a pragmatic Machiavellian approach to bring about his desired ends.

Translated, annotated, and introduced by Sherry Roush.

Sherry Roush (Penn State University) specializes in medieval and Renaissance Italian literature and culture. She is the author of Speaking Spirits: Ventriloquizing the Dead in Renaissance Italy (2015) and Hermes' Lyre: Italian Poetic Self-Commentary from Dante to Tommaso Campanella (2002), as well as the translator and editor of Jacopo Caviceo's Peregrino (2023), and Selected Philosophical Poems of Tommaso Campanella in two volumes (2011), and the co-editor of The Medieval Marriage Scene: Prudence, Passion, Policy (2005).

98 pp. 
ISBN: 978-0-7727-1154-0 softcover
Published: 2024

Contents

Acknowledgementsa

Introduction

Cited Works

Phileto's Story

Poem and Dedication

Chapter 1: Grief and Foreboding

Chapter 2: Phileto Falls in Love

Chapter 3: Wooing and Talk of Wedlock

Chapter 4: Marinaio Helps Phileto

Chapter 5: Eugenio Attacks

Chapter 6: An Exile Faces Stormy Seas

Chapter 7: Sicily and Corsairs

Chapter 8: Basilio's Slaves

Chapter 9: On a Mission for the King

Chapter 10: Atlante's Account

Chapter 11: Rewards and Return to Sea

Chapter 12: Meroè's Love for Homopathe

Chapter 13: Landolfo and Philomena

Chapter 14: Phileto's Dream

Chapter 15: The Haunting of Homopathe

Chapter 16: Shipwreck and Shepherds

Chapter 17: Reunions in Verona

Glossary of Names and Locations

Index

Praise

“This masterful, first-ever English translation of Corfino's sentimental romance is a small gem. Readers accompany the hapless hero as he endures injury by Cupid's arrow, near-death by murder, political intrigue, slavery, and much more in order to unite with his beloved Euphrosyne. A welcome point of access to the literary scene of the early Italian Renaissance."  — Deanna Shemek, University of California Irvine. 

"This gem of a translation offers a fascinating text in the history of Italian Renaissance prose narrative. The central feature of the story, Phileto's rape of Euphrosyne and his subsequent efforts to marry her, offers an interesting case in point about Renaissance attitudes toward women, their sexuality, their economic value, and the range of their options, as well as the social conventions that regulate relations between men and women.” — Michael Sherberg, Washington University in St. Louis.