Abstract

The inspiration of Folengo's Baldus finds its place in the concept of a "phantasia" plus quam phantastica. Such a "phantasia" represents the organizing center in the network of images constructing the consistency of Merlin Cocai's poem. In the Baldus the contiguity of the territory of "phantasia" with the food landscape shows the link between a diet of excess and the abnormal production of images. This abnormal production is, in turn, the main symptom of the disease stemming from "phantasia", that is melancholy. In light of this, my aim is to show how the reflection on melancholy "phantasia", which goes from Aristotelian physiology to Pomponazzi's theory of imagination, seeping through the description of the medieval meridian demon of "acedia", offers to Folengo the possibility of deforming critically Ficino's dietetics. If the biocentrism of Merlin's "phantasia" represents, above all, the process foundation of the poetry, this is only possible by means of a cosmological refoundation. Such a refoundation should replace the Neo-platonic abstraction of spiritual "sympatheia" with the interaction between organic products characterizing the "inventio-imitatio" as a digestive process.