In his most popular prose work, Mary Magdalens Funeral Teares (1591), English Jesuit Robert Southwell adapts the Mary Magdalene tradition by incorporating the meditative practices of St. Ignatius Loyola coupled with the Petrarchan language of poetry. Thus, he creates a prose work that ministered to Catholic souls, appealed to Protestant audiences, and initiated the literature of tears in England. Southwell readapts the traditional image of Mary Magdalene for a Catholic Early Modern audience by utilizing the techniques of Jesuit meditation, which later flourished in the weeper texts of Richard Crashaw and George Herbert. His vividly imagined scenes also employ the Petrarchan and Ovidian language of longing and absence and coincide with both traditional and mystic early church writers such as Bernard and Augustine. Through this combination, Southwell’s Marie Magdalens Funeral Teares resonated with Catholics deprived of both ministry and the presence of Christ in the Eucharist. These contributions solidify Southwell’s place as a pivotal figure in the religious and literary contexts of Early Modern England.

The dissertation presents an annotated critical edition of Benvento da Imola's Expositio to the first of Valerius Maximus' books, flanked by a service edition of the recollectae of Benvenuto's Bolognese course (Part II). The Introduction (Part I), in addition to explaining criteria and methods of the edition, brings order within the manuscript tradition of the Expositio and the recollecte; special attention is given to those manuscripts that seem to convey an "intermediate" redaction of the commentary, which the present work seeks to attribute to the Paduan Ludovico Buzzacarini. The long-held view that a commentary on Valerius Maximus by Giovanni Conversini exists, preserved in ms. Correr 855, is also refuted. The Observations (Part III) highlight the differences between the Expositio and the recollecte and the structural features of the commentary. Part IV updates the relationships between Benvenuto, on the one hand, and Petrarch and Boccaccio, on the other, in light of quotations and mentions of the two Corone made in the commentary on Valerius Maximus, which are more often implicit than explicit. Finally, we note the complete absence of quotations from Dante and the Commedia in the Expositio, significant of the author's desire to root his exegesis in classical antiquity. / La tesi presenta un'edizione critica commentata dell'Expositio di Benvento da Imola al primo di libro di Valerio Massimo, affiancata da un'edizione di servizio delle recollecte del corso bolognese di Benvenuto (Parte II). L'Introduzione (Parte I), oltre a spiegare criteri e metodi di edizione, mette ordine all'interno della tradizione manoscritta di Expositio e recollecte; una particolare attenzione è data a quei manoscritti che paiono trasmettere una redazione del commento “intermedia”, che il presente lavoro cerca di attribuire al padovano Ludovico Buzzacarini. Viene inoltre confutata l'opinione a lungo invalsa che esista, conservato nel ms. Correr 855, un commento a Valerio Massimo di Giovanni Conversini. Le Osservazioni (Parte III) mettono in rilievo le differenze tra l'Expositio e le recollecte e i caratteri strutturali del commento. La Parte IV aggiorna i rapporti tra Benvenuto, da una parte, e Petrarca e Boccaccio, dall'altra, alla luce di citazioni e menzioni delle due Corone fatte nel commento a Valerio Massimo, più spesso implicite che esplicite. Si rileva infine la completa assenza di citazioni di Dante e della Commedia nell'Expositio, significativo della volontà dell'autore di radicare l'esegesi nell'antichità classica.

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