17 Facts About Jacopo Mazzoni

Jacopo Mazzoni was an Italian philosopher, a professor in Pisa, and friend of Galileo Galilei.

One of the most eminent savants of the period, Jacopo Mazzoni was reported to have an excellent memory, which made him adept at recalling passages from Dante, Lucretius, Virgil, and others in his regular debates with prominent public figures.

Jacopo Mazzoni is said to have defeated the Admirable Crichton three times in dialectic.

Later in life, Jacopo Mazzoni would teach at universities in Rome, Paris, and Cesena, and was partly responsible for the establishment of the Della Crusca Academy.

Jacopo Mazzoni was an authority on ancient languages and philology, and gave a great impetus to the scientific study of the Italian language.

Jacopo Mazzoni was originally asked to write the defense by a noble friend who was distressed at criticism being leveled at the Divine Comedy by Ridolfo Castravilla.

Jacopo Mazzoni departs from his predecessors in that he conceives of poetic imitation not as the recreation of an actual object, but as the recreation of an ideal.

Jacopo Mazzoni resurrects the ancient tradition of linking poetry to rhetoric, which has the credible, rather than the true, as its object.

Jacopo Mazzoni gives great importance to poetry's effect on the audience as a determinant of quality.

Jacopo Mazzoni says that there is a distinct pleasure in poetry which, in addition to its ability to delight, carries with it a concealed lesson, moral, or other element that allows it to contribute to the improvement of society.

Jacopo Mazzoni's work is characterized by his methodical attempts to draw distinctions between similar phenomena.

Some of Jacopo Mazzoni's influences are clear, such as Plato and Aristotle.

Jacopo Mazzoni regularly makes direct reference to their works and draws some of his ideas directly from theories that they established.

The influence of other thinkers has been identified in Jacopo Mazzoni's work, including neo-platonists such as Proclus, and Greek sophists such as Dionysius of Halicarnassus and Aulus Gellius.

Jacopo Mazzoni influenced many theorists ranging from the Romantic era right up to the 21st century.

In "emphasizing poetry's relationship to images and games," for example, Jacopo Mazzoni informs romantic writers such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Friedrich von Schiller.

Jacopo Mazzoni has been subject to criticism, for example, he has been called contradictory in trying to assign both pleasure and social utility to poetry at the same time, while others question his use of the distinction between icastic and phantastic mimesis.