A Lost Gastronomic Paradise in Baldassarre da Fossombrone’s Menzoniero overamente Bosadrello (1475)

This article examines the last poem in Baldassarre da Fossombrone’s Menzoniero overamente Bosadrello, in which the author describes an earthly paradise filled with gastronomic delights, which regrettably he abandoned. Associated with the European Cockaigne tradition, whose origins can be traced back at least to the thirteenth-century Li fabliaus de Coquaigne, this text is significant for the Italian strand of this genre, for two reasons. Firstly, it is a rather early poem (it follows Boccaccio’s Bengodi, but predates the flourishing of such works in the early modern period, representing a possible model for them). Secondly, the author is known, as is his target audience, a learned and aristocratic public, in contrast to that usually associated with texts of this kind. These elements, which scholars have so far overlooked, make it possible both to hypothesise that the author inserted some autobiographical elements into his work, and to grasp its function as a source of entertainment at the Gonzaga court, whose members made up the intended public of the editio princeps.