Rerum Vulgarium Fragmenta Research Articles

Prolegomena to a New Lyric Petrarch in the Digital Future

This article presents some features of the new the edition of the Rerum vulgarium fragmenta recently published by the author. This edition is very different from all previous editions and arguably the most innovative in its editorial decisions. Preparation of the edition involved approaching the Canzoniere with a view to establishing concordances/correlations among all aspects of its “lexicon” (literally lexical, graphemic, and visual). The use of computer technology, both on the lexical level and in the treatment of images, made the difference with respect to the traditional philological approach, both in analysis and in the properly editorial phase. Proceeding by concordance/correlation implies that before making any editorial decision one must compare all analogous elements of the work. Today only computer science can provide a scientific basis for our textual analyses. Digital treatment of a text allows us to move from the syntagm to the paradigm, that is, puts us in contact with the system specific to the text that we wish to understand and also publish.

For a Study of the Reception of the <i>Canzoniere</i> in the “Petrarch Project”

This article presents a research project developed by a group of scholars from different Italian universities; they plan to help construct the hypertext configuration of the Petrarch Project by attempting a first collective research on the fortunes of a single poem of the Rerum vulgarium fragmenta ( Rvf ), sonnet 35, “Solo et pensoso i più deserti campi.” The ultimate aim of this mosaic work is to produce a synthetic, but integral, investigation of the fortunes and poetic interpretations of the text. Finally, the article discusses the new perspectives opened by the hypertext approach to the study of the reception of the Rvf . For this reason, this group of scholars extends an invitation to other researchers to collaborate in creating the map of the reception of sonnet 35 and other poems from Petrarch's Canzoniere .

Return to Philology and Hypertext in and around Petrarch’s <i>Rvf</i>

This article examines the theoretical premises and consequences of the renewed attention to the intersection between philology, hermeneutics, and criticism in humanist studies in general and in Petrarch studies in particular. The most recent philological achievements–from the new facsimile of Rerum vulgarium fragmenta: Codex Vat. Lat. 3195 ( Rvf ), edited by Belloni, Brugnolo, Storey, and Zamponi to the new critical edition of Petrarch’s masterpiece by Giuseppe Savoca–are presented and discussed as introduction to reflections on the role that a hypertext project, such as the Oregon Petrarch Open Book initiated at the University of Oregon, may play in the return to philology as necessary tool of textual criticism and hermeneutics.

The Time of His Life: Petrarch's Marginalia andRerum vulgarium fragmenta23

Petrarch's draft notebooks, MS Vaticano Latino 3196, contain marginalia that often record the date and time of composition of a poem, along with date and time of transcription into Vaticano Latino 3195 (the volume of collected poems that became known to posterity as Canzoniere ), interleaved with personal notations. I examine these marginalia, haunting in their immediacy and intimacy, for what they can tell us about Petrarch's poetics, with particular attention to the notations to Nel dolce tempo de la prima etade , the poem that became number 23 and the first canzone of the Rerum vulgarium fragmenta .

Modalità iconica e istanza metatestuale nella sestina petrarchescaMia benigna fortuna el uiuer lieto(RvfCCCXXXII)

This essay studies the metatextual implications of the interaction among metrical structure, semantic articulation, and material layout in Petrarch's double sestina Mia benigna fortuna el uiuer lieto , as the poem appears in the holograph of the Rerum vulgarium fragmenta (MS Vaticano Latino 3195).

Eagles Mating with Doves: Troilus and Criseyde, II, 925–931, Inferno v and Purgatorio ix*

CHAUCER's use of Dante was subtle and complex. Recent critical positions have called into question Chaucer's reception of Dante's fictional afterlife but there can be no doubt that the poetry of the Commedia had a vitalizing effect on Chaucer's own poetic development. One small example of such complex textual interaction comes with the figure of Criseyde's dream of the eagle at the end of Book II of Troilus and Criseyde. Book II of Troilus and Criseyde opens with Pandarus awakening to the birdsong of the swallow. Her lamentations (described as a ‘sorowful lay’ and ‘waymentynge’) are almost pointed at Pandarus, as if they were a frustrated attempt to tell him of her metamorphosis and its gruesome cause: ‘Til she so neigh hym made hire cheterynge/How Tereus gan forth hire suster take’ (lines 68–9).1 Pandarus gets up and prepares his errand of the day, to tell Criseyde of Troilus’ feelings for her. The ambiguity of Ovid's account of Procne and Philomena in the sixth book of Metamorphoses has led to two literary traditions in which Procne is transformed into either a swallow or a nightingale. Chaucer has interpreted Procne as the swallow and Philomena as the nightingale, and included the tale in the Legend of Good Women (F 2228–2393). This is the tradition of the Roman poets, and it is the tradition Petrarch follows, for example in Rerum vulgarium fragmenta 310. Dante, on the other hand, follows a second tradition where Procne is transformed into a nightingale, and Philomena a swallow, a tradition that dates back to Aristotle's Rhetorica (III.3.1406b15–19). Despite these differing traditions, the unmistakable Dantean echo in the ‘sorowful lay’ brings us to Dante's Purgatorio: Ne l’ora che comincia i tristi lai la rondinella presso a la mattina, forse a memoria de’ suo’ primi guai (Purg. ix, 13–15) [‘At the hour near morning when the swallow begins her plaintive songs, in remembrance, perhaps, of her ancient woes’]2

From Shipwreck to Port: Rvf 189 and the Making of the Canzoniere

1. For Petrarch, the "peregrinus ubique" as he once famously styled himself (Ep. Metr. 3.19.16), travel represented a foundational trope, taking both the experience of life and the writing of it as interrelated journeys; and among the constellation of travel motifs that characterized his writings, shipwreck represented a pervasive, signature theme. In this note, I want to focus on the most important of Petrarch's many shipwrecks, Passa la nave mia colma di oblio, which stands out as one of the most recognizable and enduring of Petrarch's lyric moments. Indeed, it is especially preeminent among Petrarch's fragmenta for its afterlife outside of the book which originally contained it, that is, for its many translations and imitations down through the seven or so centuries since it was written, from Sir Thomas Wyatt's "My Galley, Charged with Forgetfulness" to John Berryman's "What was Ashore then? . . . cargoed with Forget," to speak only of the literary tradition in English. But the reception history of Rvf 189 will not be my subject here, except in the sense that our concern will be with the very earliest "fortuna" of the poem within the context of the history of the making [End Page 30] of Petrarch's book, the Canzoniere or the Rerum vulgarium fragmenta (Rvf), and more specifically of the author's book itself, Vatican Latin manuscript 3195, during a crucial transitional phase of the "work in progress."1 For the journey towards posterity of Passa la nave mia began when it first entered the order of Petrarch's book, as the concluding poem at the end of the first part of the Chigi form of the Canzoniere (dated 1359-63), which survives in a manuscript written by Boccaccio, the second published form of the book according to Santagata (or the third form, according to the ordering of Wilkins' nine forms).2 The ending of the Chigi form of the book in its first part portrayed the poet shipwrecked, on the verge of catastrophic "ruina." Both the poem and Petrarch's prominent placement of it at the end of the first part corresponded to a moment of ideological and structural crisis in the history of the making of the Canzoniere, when the poet was as yet uncertain about how to resolve the dilemma he faced between competing conceptions of, on the one hand, Laura as a salvific force in his life, according to the model of the stilnovist lyric which had culminated in Dante's Beatrice, and on the other, of Laura as an object of sinful idolization and error according to the often quoted critique of Augustinus in the Secretum: "She has distanced your soul from celestial love and has deviated desire from the Creator to the creature."3 A distinct tendency toward the repudiation of Petrarch's desire for Laura had, in fact, informed the general orientation of the putative first published form of the Canzoniere, also known as the "Correggio" form (dated 1356-58), especially in the first part which is presumed to have ended with the penitential sestina 142, A la dolce ombra de le belle frondi.4 Nevertheless, as Santagata has demonstrated, this model [End Page 31] appeared to be already in crisis by the end of the second part of that form. Petrarch's continuation of the book in the Chigi form that followed shortly after the Correggio between 1359-63, further destabilized the penitential model that had informed the Correggio Canzoniere, since while reopening the book (and perhaps dividing it for the first time) Petrarch added poems to both parts but did not resolve the ideological and formal dilemma regarding Laura that had emerged.5 The abrupt ending of the Chigi form in both parts, but particularly in the first part characterized by the pessimistic and Cavalcantian shipwreck poem 189 ("Cavalcantian" in the sense that there is no penitential dimension but only despair...

The Century of Women: Representation of Women in Eighteenth-Century Italian Public Discourse by Rebecca Messbarger (review)

1070 Reviews Given the predominant classicizing culture promoted by Leonelio and Guarino, vernacular lyric in Ferrara?to borrow the title of Chapter 2?was slow to establish itself and even slower to react to the experiments of Petrarch's rime. Interestingly, though perhaps not surprisingly, the firstindications?analysed in Chapter 5?are to be found in Latin lyrics from the mid-century, in particular those of Tito Vespasiano Strozzi (a tentative defender of 'modern' writers in the Politia), and subsequently those of Boiardo. Boiardo's emergence as the outstanding exponent of Petrarchan lyric in the fifteenthcentury is thus set in the context of his association both with the Latin lyric tradition and with individuals prominent in Ferrarese culture at the time of the Council, including his chief (but not native Ferrarese) predecessor in the canzoniere form, Giusto de' Conti. The wealth of information contained in each of Pantani's chapters, on topics ranging from book ownership (Chapter 1) to Humanist debates (Chapter 3) and the contribution of minor poets in the early part of the century (Chapter 2), is immensely valuable, though it threatens at times to overwhelm the reader, and Pantani's style in Italian?elaborate, Latinate, and academic?does not lend itself to quick and easy absorption of the argument. Nevertheless, the patient reader who perseveres will be rewarded with a stimulating and satisfying conclusion in which Pantani rightly em? phasizes just how rapidly the Rerum vulgarium fragmenta entered Ferrarese poetic consciousness once the vernacular was set free from the classicizing constraints of the cultural politics of Leonelio and Guarino, and how widely it was absorbed and reused, not only in the love lyric, but also in religious poetry. This wide-ranging survey should prove of much use to scholars working on many aspects of literature in fifteenth-centuryItaly. ROYAL HOLLOWAY,UNIVERSITY OF LONDON JANEE. EVERSON The Century of Women: Representation of Women in Eighteenth-Century Italian Public Discourse. By Rebecca Messbarger. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. 2002. xi + 209pp. ?28. ISBN 0-8020-3652-x. Rebecca Messbarger's volume seeks to throw light on the intricacies of the woman question in eighteenth-century Italy 'through an analysis of the prolific public dis? course about women produced by male and female authorities of the Settecento' (p. 3). To this end she focuseson five'paradigmatic eighteenth-century textual events' (p. 19): the debate on women's education held at the Accademiadei Ricovrati in Padua in 1723, Antonio Conti's 'scientific' misogynist tract (1721), Diamante Medaglia Faini's oration on women's education to the Accademia degli Unanimi (1763), Carlo Sebastiano Franci's article in defence ofwomen published in that most eminent of Ita? lian Enlightenment journals, //caffe,in the 1760s, and Gioseffa Cornoldi Caminer's journal La donna galante ed erudita (1786-88). Women's education was a frequent object of debate, and Chapters 1 and 3 focus precisely on this, giving close analytical readings of the contributions made by men at the 1723 Padua dispute, the changes involved in the transition to the printed version of 1729, the additions at this stage of two pieces written by women, in particular Aretafila Savini de' Rossi's Apologia infavor e degli studii delle donne, and also the ora? tion delivered some fortyyears later by Medaglia Faini, Quali studi convengano alle donne. The author points out not only the differingpositions among male contributors as to whether or not women should receive an education, and if so, what kind, but also the fundamental ambiguity of their positions, the perpetual oscillation between the conviction that women are quite simply incapable of certain types of study and the afflrmation that women risk losing their 'femininity' as a result of educational MLRy 99.4, 2004 1071 excesses. Women's debating techniques are also seen as fundamentally ambivalent inasmuch as they appropriate the modes of male discourse. In the debate on women in the Settecento, startling results sometimes ensue from the enlightened emphasis on a 'scientific' approach. The theories regarding the biological constitution of women put forward in 1721 by Antonio Conti, one of the most renowned exponents of enlightened philosophy, form the topic of Chapter 2. Conti maintained that women's muscles are weaker than...

On Meandering Paths without a Map: Petrarch's Pursuit of a Safe Haven

This study follows Petrarch on his poetic journey along the Rerum vulgarium fragmenta. Though his wanderings have distinguished predecessors in St. Augustine and Dante, it is well known that Petrarch turned down their guidance. He draws freely on the writing of both to tackle sensitive issues relating to his personal and spiritual exile. It is, however, questionable whether their conversion provides a model for the harbor secured at the end of the lyrical collection. Petrarch's fear to release his vernacular language among the common people he frequently decried, furthermore, duplicated the weight of anxiety he associated with being vagrant and homeless. Petrarch, instead, identifies an affinity between his peripatetic life and that of the ancient seafarer Ulysses; in his devotion to the classical past and activity as a poet he turns to the demeanor of his devoted wife Penelope. By portraying himself torn between two seemingly conflicting kindred spirits, he liquidates the terms of the debate set by his predecessors and points in the direction of a resolution between the rhythm of adventure and social exchange, and the solitary and ordered tempo of weaving. With his masterful control of rhetoric and terminology, Petrarch successfully exchanges aesthetic/public for ethical ambitions. A nostalgic of classical culture, he completes his journey to a metaphorical home by extending the ideal of one formal, stable language to the vernacular, and his point of arrival becomes in turn a point of departure for humanist culture.

Crucified in the Mirror of Love: On Petrarch's Ambivalent Conception of Love in Rerum vulgarium fragmenta

In his Rerum vulgarium fragmenta, Petrarch demonstrates in a hitherto unseen manner how love is extremely ambiguous. Love is at one and the same time that which creates his identity, and that which dissolves it anew, it is simultaneously creation and destruction, recognition and alienation, pleasure and suffering – life and death. That is how (in the words of the brilliant Petrarch scholar Sara Sturm‐Maddox) his amorous subjectivity is profoundly ambiguous.1 The project of the poet is monological, and he strives toward a unity with himself, actualized in a circular and narcissistic auto‐communication in which he (so to speak) listens to his own speech – whereby he aims at being his own sender and recipient. But nevertheless he must concurrently affirm and negate the other, who mirrors the poet's self‐consciousness, but who contrarily alienates him as well. He has to express himself in the other in order to appear to himself which reluctantly makes the monological project dialogical. It is this fundamental, ambivalent conflict of poetry, which Petrarch eminently analyzes in his life's work. He has a strong inclination toward being solitary, unique, independent, and self‐enclosed, whereby he consequently objects the other to negation. However, he often emphasizes that self‐consciousness must make the detour by the other, if it is to achieve understanding and consciousness of itself. The purpose of this essay is to demonstrate that Petrarch's conception of love is ambivalent, and that it is due to the poet's special relation to the other, who is both conceived of as an opportunity and an obstacle to the manifestation of self‐consciousness, auto‐affection, and subjectivity.

The Making of a Lyric Sequence: Time and Narrative in Petrarch's Rerum vulgarium fragmenta

Now if things are regarded as part of a continuum, they can be taken either as many or as one; for taken separately, one by one, they are many; and as such they do not form a single object for an act of sensation or thinking, nor are they sensed or thought of simultaneously. But they can be regarded in another way, namely as composing the whole continuum; and as such they are apprehended all at once and by one act, whether of sensation or intelligence.

THE MYTH OF DAPHNE IN THERERUM VULGARIUM FRAGMENTA

AbstractRecently there has been a revival of interest in those parts of the RERUM VULGARIUM FRAGMENTA (RVF) which make explicit reference to the myth of Daphne. The play on Laura's name which connects Laura with the lauro, as well as with l'aura, l'aurora and l'aura, is coming to be seen less as the extreme point of a tendency in Petrarch to arid wit, and more as an integral and important part of the complex thematic patterning of the work. Among those who have paid attention either to individual poems or to the general question of the treatment of the myth, two authoritative voices stand out. Gianfranco Contini has said that ‘il richiamo della donna al lauro, di questo all'Apollo-sole, lega le sostanze, fonda un sistema di universale compenetrazione della natura’. And Adelia Noferi, quoting this statement of Contini, has argued that ‘[il richiamo] anche lega le sostanze e la stessa compenetrazione dell'universo alla trasformazione dell'oggetto di desiderio in emblema poetico, in emblema della poesia stes...