Gli Asolani, un prosimetro nel tempo

Taking as a starting point the current state of scholarship, this paper aims to reevaluate Pietro Bembo’s prosimetrum. It focuses on the ‘long’ composition of this work, which lasted for thirty years and was intertwined with different phases of the author’s self‑fashioning. The Asolani marked the debut of a young humanist struggling to prove himself and escape onerous political duties in Venice. The dialogue was revised and republished once Bembo had become a renowned and a prominent literary figure. The history of this development has given rise to a number of textual discrepancies which will be addressed in this contribution.