Una riscrittura di Pietro Aretino: la Vita di Maria Vergine di Lucrezia Marinella e le sue fonti

In the context of the considerable production and dissemination of devotional literature in post-Tridentine Italy, in 1602 the Venetian writer Lucrezia Marinella published for the first time her Vita di Maria Vergine, in two versions, one in prose and one in ottava rima. In this essay I will consider the prose version of Marinella’s Vita, analysing its paratext and the different editions, examining the actual and declared sources, and demonstrating that the main model used by Marinella is Pietro Aretino’s Vita di Maria Vergine (1539). Together with a detailed analysis of the ways in which Marinella used Aretino’s work, rewriting it, almost risking plagiarism, I will discuss the possible reasons of the choice of such a controversial model during the Counter-Reformation.