ellauri014.html on line 1511: But an air of mystery surrounds Marino´s life, especially the various times he spent in prison; one of the arrests was due to procuring an abortion for a certain Antonella Testa, daughter of the mayor of Naples, but whether she was pregnant by Marino or one of his friends is unknown; the second conviction (for which he risked a capital sentence) was due to the poet´s forging episcopal bulls in order to save a friend who had been involved in a duel.
ellauri014.html on line 1569: The Cambridge History of Italian Literature thought him to be "one of the greatest Italian poets of all time". He is considered the founder of the school of Marinism, later known as Secentismo (17th century) or Marinismo (19th century), characterised by its use of extravagant and excessive conceits.[2] Marino´s conception of poetry, which exaggerated the artificiality of Mannerism, was based on an extensive use of antithesis and a whole range of wordplay, on lavish descriptions and a sensuous musicality of the verse, and enjoyed immense success in his time, comparable to that of Petrarch before him.
ellauri014.html on line 1584: But some witnesses, who include both Marino´s detractors (such as Tommaso Stigliani) and defenders (such as the printer and biographer Antonio Bulifoni in a life of the poet which appeared in 1699) have firmly asserted that Marino, much of whose love poetry is heavily ambiguous, had homosexual tendencies. Elsewhere, the reticence of the sources on this subject is obviously due to the persecutions to which "sodomitical practices" were particularly subject during the Counterreformation.
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