Italian Poetry Research Articles

Forces of Nature

Forces of Nature Geoffrey Brock (bio) This autumn morning, after the freeze,They held a summit of the trees.Motions were made and seconded,And all the ochre, brown, and redSnowed down. Each ruined crown agrees: Today is a day for obsequies.And since there hasn’t been a breeze,The colors haven’t mixed; insteadOur hill is a map of colonies this autumn morning: Ochre, the land of the hackberries;Red, of the maple—geographiesThat spur my daughter to grab her sledAnd raise those nations of the dead,Scorning and smearing their boundaries this autumn morning. [End Page 104] Geoffrey Brock geoffrey brock is the author of two collections of poems, the editor of The FSG Book of Twentieth-Century Italian Poetry, and the translator of numerous books from Italian and French. He teaches in the MFA Program in Creative Writing & Translation at the University of Arkansas. * Copyright © 2019 University of North Carolina Wilmington

The Reading Horizont of Adam Smith from the Perspective of His Italian Library

The paper proposes understanding the reading interest in Italian of the thinker Adam Smith (1723-1790), author of the Theory of Moral Sentiments and of the Wealth of Nations from the perspective of the partial review of his library’s catalogue, with approximately 1,000 titles published in English, French, Italian, Greek and Latin. The list of books published in Italian, which Adam Smith purchased for his library and we assume he also read, since he quoted some, represent the Appendix of the present work. From his Italian library, 60 volumes were identified, published between 1547 (B. Castiglione, Il Cortegiano) and 1784 (32 volumes from Parnaso Italiano ovvero Raccolto de’ Poeti Classici Italiani). Just a few years before his death, the great admiror of Italian literature, assiduous reader of Italian poetry, drama, memoirs, correspondence, biographies, jurisprudence, economics, art and history (especially that of Venice and Florence) was still purchasing and reading books from the Italian states, a fact which sketches a personality with a profound cultural and humanities features.

CRASSH–BSR Issac Newton Fund Fellow: Medieval practices of weeping: investigating the penitential function of late medieval Italian poetry

CRASSH–BSR Issac Newton Fund Fellow: Medieval practices of weeping: investigating the penitential function of late medieval Italian poetry

Divided Mediterranean, Divided World: The Influence of Arabic on Medieval Italian Poetry

Divided Mediterranean, Divided World: The Influence of Arabic on Medieval Italian Poetry describes the significant role played by Arabic and Islamic poetry, legends, tales, and philosophy on major Italian poets in the Middle Ages in spite of the denial of some of the poets themselves of such an influence. Psychologists do not seem to pay much attention to the love–hate syndrome that affects sensitive souls in politically unstable states. Similarly, many literary critics continue to turn a blind eye to the influence of Arabic on Medieval Italian poetry. Historians also present history to us not only through documents they have read in archives, but they similarly express their own divergent personal opinions and interpretations of historical events.

The Vernacular Roots of Dante’s Reading of Ovid in the Commedia

ABSTRACTThis essay re-examines the role of Ovid in Dante’s Commedia, complementing the traditional comparisons between Dante’s verses and Ovid’s Latin texts with a different source of Ovidian influence: the references to the Latin poet in Italian vernacular lyric poetry. Finding several precedents for Dante’s treatment of Ovidian material in the Commedia in the poetry of his predecessors and contemporaries, this essay argues that Dante’s Ovidian sources consist of both Ovid’s Latin texts and Ovidian readings in vernacular lyric poetry. Through the analysis of a main feature of such vernacular readings, the evaluation of Ovid’s authority in matters of love in sonnet exchanges, I illustrate the vernacular roots of Dante’s reading of Ovid in the Commedia, and show how Dante draws on the Latin and vernacular Ovidian traditions to define his writing in the Commedia.

Leopardi Local and Global: Italian Society, European Modernity, and Poetry’s “Natural Duty”

Abstract The dialogue between antimodernist and Romantic elements in the work of the Italian poet Giacomo Leopardi fueled his thinking on the crucial issue of italianità, or “Italian identity.” Leopardi wanted to protect what was unique and enduring in Italian culture, especially its ancient Roman literary heritage, yet he understood that his divided, chaotic, stagnant country needed renewal and change, a recurring subject in his early patriotic odes. His ideas on Italy in the Discorso sopra lo stato presente dei costumi degl’italiani (Discourse on the Present State of the Customs of the Italians, ca. 1824) and in the “Palinodia al marchese Gino Capponi” (“Recantation for Marchese Gino Capponi,” 1835) are intertwined with his powerful defense of the social function of poetry. Leopardi exploits the aesthetic tensions resulting from the historical rift between ancient and modern literary concerns by brilliantly applying them to the contentious role of an isolated, politically fragmented Italy in an interdependent, internationalist world.

“La poesia dopo la fine della poesia”: Visionary Realism and the Ethics of Playful Care in Aldo Nove's Twenty-First Century Poetry

This article examines the experimental realism that Aldo Nove has adopted in two recent poetry collections, A schemi di costellazioni (2010) and Addio mio Novecento (2014).These works similarly feature a time in which personal memories intertwine with geological elements. In doing so, they seemingly mark a break with Nove’s previous poetry and prose, concerned with a disturbing representation of late-capitalist lifestyle. I argue, though, that Nove’s cosmological poetry ushers in a new stage of the author’s material and visionary realism. His recent poetry represents the “material complexity” of the Anthropocene, while suggesting playful ethics of non-hierarchical coexistence with nonhuman agents. Nove retraces these perspectives of co-survival to the oft-forgotten origin of western thought, which—beginning with the Milesian School—is surprisingly rooted in the recognition of nature as the generative principle of life and meaning.At a metaliterary level, Nove’s twenty-first century realism marks a farewell to the twentieth-century tradition, while foreseeing new stylistic and thematic possibilities for Italian poetry. The author repurposes the polemic materialism of the avant-gardes and the anti-realist poetics of the “parola innamorata” into a thought-provoking reflection on the meaning of playful care in the troubled epoch of the Anthropocene.

Was Ugo Foscolo (1778–1827) affected by alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency?

Niccolò Ugo Foscolo (1778–1827), known as Ugo, is one of the masters of the Italian poetry. A writer and a revolutionary, he embraced the ideals of the French Revolution and took part in the stormy political discussions, which the fall of the Republic of Venice had provoked. Despite his poor health, Foscolo lived an adventurous life serving as a volunteer in the Guardia Nazionale and in the Napoleonic army. Following Napoleon’s fall (1814), he went into voluntary exile in early 1815. He reached London in Sept. 1816 and lived in poverty at Turnham Green (Chiswick) until his premature death.Foscolo’s medical history has been poorly investigated and the cause of his death remains unclear. In an attempt to shed light on his clinical history, we analyzed his Correspondence (Epistolario), a series of more than 3000 letters written between 1794 and 1827. From the age of 26 (1808), Foscolo had frequent episodes of cough and dyspnea that progressively worsened. Four acute respiratory exacerbations occurred in 1812. Between September 1812 and April 1813, he had breathlessness as that of asthma.Frail and ailing, he developed a chronic liver disease in 1826. In August 1827, weakness, dyspepsia and drowsiness further increased and dropsy became manifest. He went into coma on September 7, 1827 and died aged 49 three days later.Based on a brief history of urethritis and urinary obstructions (1811–1812), previous scholars have suggested that Foscolo had urethral stenosis that caused a chronic bladder outlet obstruction and led to consequent renal failure. This hypothesis, however, does not mention the respiratory symptomatology present since 1804, which is a pivotal feature of Foscolo’s illness.We surmise that Foscolo suffered from alpha-1 anti trypsin (AAT) deficiency, a rare genetic disease, which caused his premature death and support our interpretation with documental evidence.

Monteverdi, Marino and the aesthetic of meraviglia

In his influential book, Monteverdi and the end of the Renaissance (1987), Gary Tomlinson argued that Monteverdi’s fidelity to the integrity of the poetry he set to music marked him as one of the last proponents of Renaissance Humanism. With the seconda pratica, the composer proved himself to be the most astute musical interpreter of Italian poetry, and the master of matching musical technique to poetic gesture. But following his introduction to the sensual poetry of Giambattista Marino (1569–1625)—often called ‘the poet of the marvellous’—Monteverdi did not always respect the formal integrity of his texts. Though it is generally agreed that the appeal of Marinist meraviglia prompted a change in Monteverdi’s compositional approach after c.1614, the way in which the composer engaged this new aesthetic in music has not been fully explained. In order to come to a nuanced understanding of the composer’s late style, this essay reconsiders how the traditional view of Monteverdi—the singularly perceptive interpreter of literature and the creator of the seconda pratica—can be reconciled with his vastly different approach to poetry and music in his settings of Marino, an approach based on contrast rather than resemblance.

Riflessioni sull'opera di Giuseppe Pitrè nel primo centenario della scomparsa. Gli scritti inediti

The essay, on the occasion of the first centenary of the disappearance of Giuseppe Pitre (1841-1916), focuses on those unpublished works that have been edited and published during the National edtion of 1985, which was dedicated to the most accomplished folklorist of Palermo. The topic of this essay is mostly aimed to the lessons the Professor held at the University of Palermo since 1910 until 1916.The former edition made possible to focus on about sixty papers, including unpublished ones, that frame the magnitude of his contribute to the study of peculiar folklore in Sicily: Demopsicologia through which a part of popular Italian poetry, foreign popular poetry and short stories, have been brought to new life. Pitre has impressed the academic interest on such this folkloristic studies and through this new essay, we may now see more clearly the greatness of his contribution to a discipline that lead us close to our real cultural belongings.

Auto-stereotypes and Hetero-stereotypes in Slovene and Italian Poetry About Trieste From the First Half of the 20th Century

This article brings to light the socio-political conditions in the Triestine region, at the end of the 19th century and in the fi rst half of the 20th century. Th ese conditions infl uenced the formation of stereotypical, regionally coloured perceptions of Slovenes and Italians in the Slovene and Italian poetry about Trieste from the fi rst half of the 20th century, which were specific to the Triestine area or rather the wider region around Trieste, where the Slovene and Italian communities cohabited. This article also points out that these stereotypes are constructs. The Italian Triestine literature most frequently depicted the Italians (native culture) before the First World War, in accordance to the needs of the non-literary irredentist disposition. In this light, it depicted them as the inheritors of the Roman culture, wherein it highlights their combativeness and burning desire to “free” Trieste from its Austro-Hungarian prison. An increase in auto-stereotypes among the Slovene poetry is noticeable after the First World War and is most likely a consequence of the socio-political changes in Trieste. The Slovene Triestine literature depicted the Slovenes (native culture) after the First World War as “slaves” and simultaneously as the determined defenders of their land, who are also fully aware of their powerlessness against the immoral aggressor and cruel master (Italian hetero-stereotype) and so often call upon the help of imaginary forces (mythical heroes and personified nature in the Trieste region) and God. The Italian Triestine literature mostly depicted the Slovenes before the First World War as an inferior people, often referred to by the word “ščavi”. After the First World War, the Slovenes are depicted merely as the residents of the former Austro-Hungarian Trieste, meaning they were part of the narrative surrounding Trieste, only in when the narrative was set before the First World War. In this case, pre-war Slovene stereotypes appear, also depicted as part of the literary myth of the “Habsburg” Trieste, namely as the folkloric characters from the surrounding countryside.

La controverità delle madri: la ballata «à la manière de Villon» tra Sanguineti e Pasolini

The aim of this study is to show that, in the early Sixties, the Italian poetry, with Sanguineti and Pasolini, tried to use comic forms. In fact, among the many reuses of the metrical forms during the Twentieth century, the ballad by Villon created a curious event: in 1961, Sanguineti published Ballata delle controverita (Ballad of countertruth), a Villonian parody, and Pasolini wrote the Ballata delle madri (Ballad of mothers), a satirical text dedicated to the mothers of journalists that vexed him, taken from a metrical pattern of the French poet. Through a historicistic investigation, this work tries to show that the use of comic figures is determined, in large part, by the influence of Brecht, who had used texts by Villon in his Threepenny Opera. The survey made it possible to detect that these attempts to write comic verses, made in the case of Sanguineti in a parodic tone and in the case of Pasolini in a satirical tone, have determined, as a way to balance the comical figures, the adoption of stanzaic forms and rhyming schemes.

The Keats-Shelley Prize Essays 2015

This essay attempts to chart the renascence of Dante’s work and reputation in Hanoverian Britain. It surveys the country’s Dantean re-acquaintance, which began in the early nineteenth century, from the first complete English translations of the Commedia to more liberal, interpretative responses, like Byron’s ‘The Vision of Dante’ and Blake’s illustrations. I argue that a neglect of Italian poetry in general was overhauled, in only a few decades, by a culture of Dante-worship, which the Romantic poets propagated and which continues to this day; I do, however, qualify this culture with the unease of certain figures, particularly William Wordsworth. On the one hand, Dante was for the Romantics a bountiful source of image, myth, vision, and quotation; on the other hand, his example confounded many an imitator, particularly those who tried to reproduce his formal pyrotechnics, and his language sometimes exceeded the bounds of good taste. Whatever his impact, he became a ubiquity in the Romantic imagination.

La prima traduzione francese della “Vita Nuova” nell’opera dell’italianista Étienne-Jean Delécluze

A pupil of Jacques-Louis David and painter himself, etienne-Jean Delecluze is better known as classicist art critic for the «Journal des Debats» and the «Moniteur Universel», as the author of histories of art and a book on David. Yet his interest in Italian culture ranged from painting to literature, and his studies on Italian poetry convinced him to traduce Dante’s Vita Nuova in French. So, among French xixth century ‘italianisants’ Delecluze is certainly one of those who contributed to diffuse the knowledge of Dante’s minor or forgotten works in France. His translation of the Vita Nuova was published in 1843, after a long work, and immediately encountered great appreciation among critics, both in France and in Italy. Reprints were accompanied by insightful excerpts of criticism where Delecluze gave proof of a good critical competence of Dante’s poetics too.

“Dolce era la notte.” Iraqi and Iranian Poets in Italy: Metrical-Stylistic Implications of Translingual Versification

The essay that follows is a metrical-stylistic analysis of two anthologies of poetry published in Italy in 1998 and 2000 by poets who migrated from Iraq and Iran to Italy during the 1970s and 1980s, and began to publish poetry in Italian from the mid-1990s: Quaderno Mediorientale I: Iraq and Quaderno Mediorientale II: Iran. Although the two groups are heterogeneous, the authors are united by a common diasporic experience and translingual condition. Moreover, their Italian works are strongly characterized by their native literary traditions. The first section of this essay contextualizes some of the reasons behind the selection of these two corpora. It then describes key aspects of Iraqi and Iranian migration to Italy with reference to the European context. Finally, it provides a brief overview of the writers from the two countries who have produced creative works in Italian. The second section introduces the anthologies through an exploration of their themes and imagery, especially in relation to the representation of space. In the third section, prosodic and stylistic implications are considered with a view to delineating the intermingling of genres, forms, and images that emerge. The essay concludes by highlighting the challenge posed by translingual works for our understanding of the Italian literary canon as well as their aesthetic power and innovatory force in the Italian contemporary poetry scene.

“Måske vil vi engang glædes ved at mindes dette”. Om Giacomo Castelvetros håndskrifter i Det Kongelige Bibliotek

“Måske vil vi engang glædes ved at mindes dette”. Om Giacomo Castelvetros håndskrifter i Det Kongelige Bibliotek

Italian Poetry of the Renaissance: Recent Studies and New Perspectives

An analysis of literary criticism on Italian Renaissance poetry is presented, focusing on works carried out from the 1980s to 2004. Topics discussed include the work of Italian literary critic Carlo Dionisotti on Italian poet Petrarch, research on women's poetry, and the contribution of scholars such as Simone Albonico, Cesare Bozzetti, and Antonia Tissoni Benvenuti.

L’edizione completa del laudario perugino

Lauda is a type of Italian poetry in praise of the Virgin Mary, Christ, or the saints. The poetic lauda was first associated with the early Franciscan friars (the 13th-century Franciscan poet Jacopone da Todi wrote many laudi spirituali in the vernacular), then it was used in confraternal groups and for religious celebrations, and eventually became part of the Italian version of the miracle play, the sacra rappresentazione. Laude were composed either in sestina or in ballata form for recitation, their content usually consisting of exhortations to a moral life or of events in the lives of Christ and the saints. The composers were mostly anonymous. The so-called Laudario Perugino is the largest existing collection of laude. It was assembled about the mid-13th century and copied in several manuscripts. The first critical edition of this Laudario, consisting of more than 180 poems, has been published in two volumes by Gina Scentoni and Maurizio Perugi (2011 and 1012). This paper deals with the most important features of this abundant material, which will considerably enlarge our knowledge of medieval Italian language and poetry.

De la diabolisation de la ville à la poétique du mur – sur la ville dans la poésie italienne du xixe à nos jours

The study aims at focusing on the main types of relationship existing between mankind and the City, as these were developed in the Italian poetry from the nineteenth century to the present time. The purpose of this work is to show how the discourse about cities evolved according to urban changes, evolving poetry, ideas and mentalities. Two main trends are emerging from the studied corpus (which was voluntarily limited but significant). On the one hand, the demonization of the City, through which the poets bring to life, each of them in their own poetic way, the city/nature age-old dichotomy (Leopardi amongst others), the city/countryside dichotomy (Pascoli, Pavese), or depict heavy portraits of “black”cities (D’Annunzio, Buzzati - poet). On the other hand, the trend of a « redemption » that be varied and contrasting: The use of urban motifs as poetic instruments to express a state of mind (e.g. Ungaretti, Montale); the glorification of the most modern aspects of the city (with the futurists); at last and most importantly – and this example is the closest to the present time and the most original in that respect, given by Umberto Fiori’s poetry - the transformation of the city into a space of possible positive contemplation, a privilege previously only assigned to “Nature”.

Blindness and Therapy in Late Medieval French and Italian Poetry by Julie Singer

writing, or the connection between description, visual evidence, and painting. Here Schöch covers eighteenth-century theories of language in Condillac, Rousseau, and others, ultimately showing that painting is a model for descriptive writing. Passages of the type described in the second section represent only one aspect of descriptive writing in this period. An entire esthétique picturale begins to emerge at the narrative level in the novels of this period:“Cet enjeu concerne l’ensemble de l’écriture descriptive , passages descriptifs inclus, mais tout particulièrement la modalité de l’écriture descriptive que j’ai choisi de désigner comme le discours descriptif” (214). As this study demonstrates, we should not consider description or narration as abstract, transhistorical practices, but rather view them within specific historical frameworks. This typology of novels will certainly form a useful basis for comparison with other novels of the period, or with descriptive practices in other periods. Boston University Gillian B. Pierce Singer, Julie. Blindness and Therapy in Late Medieval French and Italian Poetry. Cambridge: Brewer, 2011. ISBN 978-1-84384-272-9. Pp. 238. $99. Situated at the junction of medieval studies and disability studies, Singer’s book combines literary analysis and cultural history to offer an insightful examination of the interaction between rhetoric and medicine in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century French and Italian poetry. Singer focuses on the role of eyesight and blindness in love at a time when lyric explored—and at times, challenged—medical concepts. After presenting her project, Singer turns to the overlap of medical and poetic discourses in the love-imprint. She discusses the evolving view of the eye, which became an active participant in creating love, and demonstrates that the eyes served as a site of sex difference, with love darts or rays emanating from women’s eyes and being received by men’s.Anti-medical discourse is at the heart of the second chapter.While emphasizing Italian lyric, Singer explains that Petrarch’s justification of rhetoricians’ borrowing of medical language prepares the way for later French poets to treat blindness. The rest of the volume examines four rhetorical strategies: irony, metaphor, metonymy, and synecdoche, each analyzed in a separate chapter. Singer places irony in the context of the humors and restoring balance through contraries. She defines medieval irony and outlines two main models before focusing on works by Petrarch and Jacques Bauchant. The use of medical metaphor, particularly in Machaut’s Remede de Fortune, reveals that verse may distract from pain and that form can offer a cure: Singer provides a fascinating investigation of the reflection of the narrator’s lovesickness in the fixedform poems, arguing that the lover can ultimately heal himself. Singer also considers metaphor in Christine de Pizan’s Avision Christine,Alain Chartier’s Livre de l’Espérance, and the work of Gilles le Muisit, a blind abbot. Form continues to play an important role in the chapter linking metonymy and prosthesis. Machaut’s Livre du Voir Dit takes 232 FRENCH REVIEW 87.4 Reviews 233 center stage, with Singer proposing that the lyric insertions compensate for lacks. She sees the use of ‘round’ fixed forms such as ballades, virelais, and rondeaux as supplementing the defective eye’s role in love. Ultimately, she concludes, the lyric prostheses fail because they stand out from the surrounding text instead of concealing their difference. Singer devotes her final chapter to synecdoche, concentrating on images of blindfold Fortune in French poetry. Studying works by Machaut, Charles d’Orléans, Villon, Martin Le Franc, and Pierre Michault, she uncovers the therapeutic potential of blindness itself. Singer’s work is a model of the interdisciplinarity that she sees in her texts,which intermingle poetic and medical language.There are rare inconsistencies (Michault’s title is given as both“Dance”and“Danse” aux aveugles), and occasionally, Singer provides more background information than necessary for her arguments whereas at other times—particularly for authors besides Petrarch and Machaut—I wished for greater detail. Moreover, the volume could explore further the issue of how ‘real’ the effects of rhetorical remedies are. Those minor quibbles notwithstanding, Singer’s innovative approach raises important questions about lyric’s power, inviting us to view blindness...