The background for the poems and the circumstances of their composition emerge from Casa's lively correspondence, a selection of which appears in an appendix. Notes provide detailed information about persons, places, and events, about meters and genres, about figures of speech, about Casa's adaptations of classical materials, and about recurrent themes. The notes and commentary point out the ways in which Casa weaves poems composed for separate occasions into a coherent sequence with a structure of its own. Readers may well approach Casa's book with diverse interests in mind. The poems and letters together offer a fascinating close-up of how literary, political, religious, and erotic strains can interact.
Authoritative models bend and stretch under the pressure of passion and ambition.
The emergence of a carefully and boldly calculated poetic sequence adds a new and specific chapter to the history of this classical construct, which Alexandrian Greeks pioneered and Romans elaborated into an art consummately practiced and theorized by poets though critics left it uncategorized and unnamed. That Casa produced this classicizing sequence contemporaneously with his canzoniere invites scrutiny for the relations between aristocratic Latin and popular Italian in a moment formative for the modern mind.