He was born in
Matera, and educated in Naples where he met with the poets
Torquato Tasso and
Giambattista Marino. At first a friend of Marino, he later became his bitter enemy and indulged in literary and personal polemics with him. Especially in
Dello occhiale (Venice: Carempello, Sandro Bazacchi, 1627), Stigliani laments Marino's many “failures” in the poem
Adone. Marino refused, Stigliani indignantly points out, to follow
Aristotle's unities, ignoring the need for a proper beginning, middle, and an end. The poem is overwhelmed by superfluities, enthusiasms, and disproportion. In chapter 6, Stigliani regrets the way Marino “stumbles” through the episodes of
Adonis and
Venus. And so on, for more than 500 pages (there are tables at the end that list all of Marino's “errors”). Stigliani's contentious personality led him initially to seek employment in various courts of Northern Italy, including
Parma, where he was employed by the Duke. He ultimately had to remove himself to Rome, where he published a volume of his works, mainly romantic
sonnets, in
Canzoniero dato in luce da Balducci (1625, Rome). The
Canzoniero reveals
Baroque tendencies restrained by a sense of literary discipline deriving from
Petrarch and the classics. In 1617 Stigliani published in Piacenza
Il Mondo Nuovo, an
epic poem about the discovery of America owing a good deal to the Italian
Romance tradition. In his depiction, Stigliani merges a detailed description of
America with characters and situations that are closer to the realities of life in seventeenth-century
Europe, creating a bridge between the two continents. Stigliani's America is an allegory of the old world and the poet used it to construct a critique of the society of the day. The description of the
newt that lives in the
Rio de la Plata is a way to make fun of his archenemy Giambattista Marino; the execution of the
amazons in the poem is a criticism of the behavior of his patron
Ranuccio Farnese; the mad people of the island of Brandana mirror the behavior of all the princes and courtiers who occupy every European
Renaissance court. And since it is a poem, the shrewd poet can always defend himself by saying that the
Mondo nuovo is, in part, a fictional work. According to Stigliani, the new world with all its faults such as
cannibalism and the freedom of sexual mores is, despite everything, better than the corruption and flaws which he finds in his contemporary Europe. Thanks to his friendship with
Galileo supporter
Virginio Cesarini, Stigliani was given the task of editing Galileo's
Saggiatore (
The Assayer) (1623). Stigliani died in Rome on 27 January 1651. After his death, his manuscripts were purchased by cardinal
Sforza Pallavicino, an admirer of Stigliani and an opponent of Marinism. His letters were published posthumously in 1661. == Works ==