Pietro Bembo and the Erotic Lexicon

The works of Pietro Bembo (1470-1547) intrigue readers approaching them from various angles... Here, my aim is modest: to highlight passages in Bembo’s literary texts which exploit the erotic lexicon so popular in his day

Hyperactive Neuroendocrine Secretion Causes Size, Feeding, and Metabolic Defects of C. elegans Bardet-Biedl Syndrome Mutants

Bardet-Biedl syndrome, BBS, is a rare autosomal recessive disorder with clinical presentations including polydactyly, retinopathy, hyperphagia, obesity, short stature, cognitive impairment, and developmental delays. Disruptions of BBS proteins in a variety of organisms impair cilia formation and function and the multi-organ defects of BBS have been attributed to deficiencies in various cilia-associated signaling pathways. In C. elegans, bbs genes are expressed exclusively in the sixty ciliated sensory neurons of these animals and bbs mutants exhibit sensory defects as well as body size, feeding, and metabolic abnormalities. Here we show that in contrast to many other cilia-defective mutants, C. elegans bbs mutants exhibit increased release of dense-core vesicles and organism-wide phenotypes associated with enhanced activities of insulin, neuropeptide, and biogenic amine signaling pathways. We show that the altered body size, feeding, and metabolic abnormalities of bbs mutants can be corrected to wild-type levels by abrogating the enhanced secretion of dense-core vesicles without concomitant correction of ciliary defects. These findings expand the role of BBS proteins to the regulation of dense-core-vesicle exocytosis and suggest that some features of Bardet-Biedl Syndrome may be caused by excessive neuroendocrine secretion

Teofilo Folengo Baldus Glosses Compared 1517 and 1520

A comparison of all the marginal glosses from the epic poemn Baldus by Teofilo Folengo in the 1517 Paganini edition and in the 1520 reprint by Cesare Arrivabene: side by side comparison and translation into Englis

Pietro Bembo Motti translated (Draft) by Ann Mullaney

Pietro Bembo (1470-1547) wrote and published in an era in which a highly developed erotic code was adopted by dozens and dozens of writers in Italy, and presumably understood by tens of thousands of readers in Europe. A most helpful text for decoding the erotic lexicon was written by Jean Toscan: Le carnaval du langage: le lexique érotique des poètes de l’équivoque de Burchiello à Marino (XVe-XVIIe siècles), Lille, Presses Universitaires, 1981; thesis 1978, 4 vols. The text was transcribed from Motti inediti e sconosciuti di M. Pietro Bembo edited and annotated by Vittorio Cian (Venice, I. Merlo, 1888

Folengo 1521 Toscolana from Portioli Aug 2011

This is a PDF I made to aid in navigating the 1521 Baldus based on the 2 vol edition by Attilio Portioli (1882-9

Dialogi quos Pomiliones vocat (Dialogs he Calls Short Pieces)

The first section of the text of the unusual 1533 volume published by both Giovanni Battista and Teofilo Folengo: dialogues and prose pieces, inclduing the first of the Psalms commentaries published, together with a translation into English and annotations

Four versions of Baldus facing Gaioffo

Here are four different versions of a traumatic scene from the life and times of Baldus, starting with the woodcut print of Folengo's 1521 Macaronic Work

Macaronic Publishing 1521: Five Letters by Teofilo Folengo, Alessandro Paganin and Federcio Gonzaga

A letter from Folengo's pseudonym-personality, Merlin, to the printer Paganini, claiming that he does not want to relinquish his own copy for publication; a response from Paganini telling him that he got a copy of the text from Federico Gonzaga (accompanied by the letter Gonzaga sent to Paganini, 1520); a letter to the reader from Paganini, and a response from the author (Merlin). Original letters and English translations

GB Folengo: Glossary of works

Glossary of approximately 11,800 Latin words with English translations from GB Folengo's works (1543-1559