Il genere 'tenzone' nelle letterature romanze delle origini (Atti del convegno di Losanna, 13-15 novembre 1997) by Matteo Pedroni (review)

Abstract

446 Reviews II genere 'tenzone' nelle letterature romanze delle origini (Atti del convegno di Losanna, i3-i5novembreiggy). Ed. by Matteo Pedroni and Antonio Stauble. (Memo? ria del tempo, 15) Ravenna: Longo. 1999. 412 pp. ?31. ISBN 88-8063-192-6. It might seem surprising but, at the time of the conference that produced this book, the systematic study of ltalian poetic tenzoni had not been tackled foralmost seventy years, since Salvatore Santangelo published his pioneering book Le tenzoni poetiche nella letteraturaitaliana delle origini (Geneva: Olschki, 1928). This may well reflectthe complexity inherent in the contextualization of a blurred genre which encompasses a broad range of differentthemes, registers, and metrical forms. The book reviewed here has the great merit of adopting a comparative and 'interdisciplinary' approach (as pointed out by the editors, p. 7) that brings together a number of Romance litera? tures (ltalian, French, Provencal, Spanish, and Portuguese) considered under a range of differentperspectives, including those of Latin antecedents and modern semiotic theory. In this context, Claudio Giunta's two recent volumes have also shown how fruitfulan intertextual approach may be (Versi a un destinatario (Bologna: II Mulino, 2002); Due saggi sulla tenzone (Rome and Padua: Antenore, 2002)). The volume opens aptly with Michelangelo Picone's essay on a typical tenzonequestio : the exchange of sonnets between Jacopo Mostacci, Pier delle Vigne, and Giacomo da Lentini on the nature of love. In spite of diverging theories (the impossibility of knowing Love, according to Mostacci, vs. resolute definition of Love as 'a desire', strikingly similar to that formulated at the beginning of Cappellano's De amore), the continuity with the structure and themes of medieval Latin dialectic tradition is evident in the rigorous division of the individual texts. A striking example of this can be seen in apartimen between Aycard de Fossat and Girard Cavalaz, trans? lated with a commentary in Paolo Gresti's essay; however, the Provencal inheritance is most evident in the tenzoni representing, with varying degrees of fictitiousness, a debate between a female and a male lover aimed at securing the latter's achievement of the former's love. Such are Chiaro Davanzati's tenzoni fittizie examined by Aldo Menichetti, where the lady's reluctance is often motivated by her higher social stand? ing and a concern for 'li mal parlieri' ('Se ricelato lungo tempo siete', 1. 14). Social disparity is a factor of paramount importance in understanding the co-ordinates, both internal (those inherent in the fiction on which the tenzone is based) and external (the sociocultural context which produced the text and for the appreciation of which the text was crafted), of many types of poetic correspondence. Such analysis is particu? larly fruitfulwhen applied to poems marked by a specific social context, such as the French jeu-parti that irradiated from the northern French court of Arras and the Provencal pastorela (whose semantic connections with the tenzone are pointed out by Grazia Lindt in her 'Analisi comparata della tenzone e del contrasto'; somepastorelas by Cerveri de Girona are also considered by Miriam Cabre in her study). Philippe Vernay's essay focuses on the thematic spectrum of the jeu-parti, highlighting its contacts with lyric poetry (chansons) and more generally with the courtly ethos of jin'amors; the logical structure of such poems is then exemplified through a detailed reading of Jehan, li quiex a mieudre vie. The structure of the jeu-parti is especially suited to tackling canonical questions of medieval rhetoric such as the dilemma an uxor sit ducenda: as shown in Jean-Claude Miihlethaler's essay 'Disputer de mariage', the topic is crucial to several generations of French poets because 'dans le sillage d'une tradition qui veut que lafin'amors soit une relation adultere, le mariage sert de repoussoir a l'amour' (p. 204). Typically carried out between poets (and sparked by their intellectual curiosity), the development of poetic correspondence to solve a dilemma could avail itselfof imaginary interlocutors (animals, objects, feelings, or even God) to reafhrmthe eminently interior nature of the dialogue; such communicative strategies were more common in Occitanic poetry and, according to Francois Zufferey's typo- MLR, 99.2, 2004 447 logical study, 'Tensons reelles et tensons fictives au sein de...