Folengo, Teofilo

Related Category: Italian Literature: Biographies

(tāô´fēlō fōlĕng´gō), 1496–1544, Italian burlesque poet, who used the pseudonym Merlinus Cocaius or Merlino Cocajo. A Benedictine monk, he left (c.1515) his monastery to become a wandering poet, returning in 1534. Folengo was outstanding among the macaronic poets (who wrote mixing Latin grammatical forms with vernacular vocabulary). His Baldus, which antedates Don Quixote, is a burlesque of the chivalric romance and is considered the great epic of the macaronic type.