Love As an Ordering Principle in Cavalcanti, Pound And

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

Love As an Ordering Principle in Cavalcanti, Pound And LOVE AS AN ORDERING PRINCIPLE IN CAVALCANTI, POUND AND ROBERT DUNCAN BY RALPH ROBERT WESTBROOK B.A., University of Manitoba, 1966. A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIRMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS in the Department of English We accept this thesis as conforming to the required* standard THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA April, 1969 i In presenting this thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for an advanced degree at the University of British Columbia, I agree that the Library shall make it freely available for reference and Study. I further agree that permission for extensive copying of this thesis for scholarly purposes may be granted by the Head of my Department or by his representatives. It is understood that copying or publication of this thes,is for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission. Department The University of British Columbia Vancouver 8, Canada ABSTRACT The purpose of this thesis is to offer some explination of the manner in which Ezra Pound has created a metaphysical centre for The Cantos through absorption and integration of the Renaissance metaphysic of courtly and transcendent love and the pragmatic ethical philosophy of Confucius. It resolves no problems, either textual or critical, but rather suggests that the thirty-sixth Canto is central to the philosophy underlying the poem as a whole. From the central fourth chaper, the thesis attempts to give some idea of the nature of Pound's influence upon one other poet and how this influence has resulted in a new evaluation of the original Cavalcanti material. The short intoductory chapter outlines the nature of the problem of love as an ordering principle which provides a reconciliation of the disparate and seemingly opposing forces which shape human experience. This unity, it is stated, represents an attempt on the part of western man to integrate his dualistic response to the world of Process, an essentially eastern concept. Chapter two outlines the nature of Cavalcanti's poem and the philosophy of love which it contains. Apparently, this poem has yet to be interpreted with any degree of finality and I have necessarily had to work through the general concensus of critical opinion. The third chapter points to Pound's conception of the philosophy of Guido Cavalcanti's canzon and how Pound has interpreted the "guerdon" of the amour courtois tradition as the Confucian doctrine of l_i_. Chapter four explores the connexion between Pound's conception and interpretation of Donna Me Prega and how, from the concept of individual compassion, Pound envisions a viable order for the society of western man, while continually maintaining the concept of the universe as Process. The fifth chapter deals with Robert Duncan's stated variation on Pound's view of Donna Me Prega and the philosophy contained therein, and offers some comments on the different possibilities vf order, or lack of same, as expressed by Duncan. The conclusion discusses the metaphysical concept of love as a principle of unity in relation to some modern statements of epistemology and aesthetics, and concludes that Pound has expressed the sense of order and unity in a more universal and objective manner than has Duncan- The addendum of chapter seven suggests some possibilities for further research into these areas and concludes that Ezra Pound's consciousness of the Processal universe is essentially oriental, ie., an aesthetic response, while the concept remains largely an intellectual postulate in the western world. ii On the whole, the primary concern is for the explanation of the relationship among such elements as imagination, transcendent love, human social order, and the concept of the universe as an all-embracing Process of interacting elements. iii CONTENTS PAGE 1. Introduction p. 1 2. Donna Me Prega p. 5 3. Mercede as Compassion p. 29 4. Compassion or Order p. 52 5. Inmersed in the Process p. 78 6. Conclusion p. 106 7. Addendum p. 113 8. Bibliography p. 118 iv LOVE AS AN ORDERING PRINCIPLE Chapter One: Introduction The greatest poets have traditionally been those who worked toward and effected a synthesis, an integration of the varied elements of their experience, both in life and in art. Man is both sentient and intellectual, imaginative and rational. The various philosophies reflect this duality in tiiat each postulates reality as existent intwo distinct aspects. In philosophy, one sees the duality stated in terms of the positions of realist and idealist; in religion, the division is made between the rationalist and the mystic; and in art between the poles of classical and romantic. None of these positions represent an expression of actuality, as each approaches existence from the perspective of some limited theory concerning the nature of man and existence. Each position assumes that man's nature is accurately defined by that particular half- truth which it postulates and each, if accepted as a statement of fact and a valid philosophical position, is exclusive in that it disallows any further information about existence that the opposite position could provide. Surrounding the divided house of human consciousness and await• ing the cessation of man's artificial distinction lies the world of Process. Whether one subscribes to the view that the universe is composed wholly of spirit or that the universe is entirely material, or even to the 2 recently-discovered view (at least, by the western world), that the universe is a flux of matter and energy constantly shifting and re-phasing, the Process awaits man's discovery of, and integration to, its river-like flow. The Process of continual anabolism and catabolism, form and dissolution, matter and energy, has been in every age the essential reality of existence. Each culture has arrived at a distinctly different orientation toward the Process, from the passive acceptance of and integration to the "other" aspect of reality that the Asian cultures have achieved, to the theoretical postulates of human control over the "machine" of nature made by western man. Beyond the poles of this traditionally dichotomy lies the essential truth that neither is a complete statement of the actual situation and that both positions, when taken together, form a total cosmological view. In each culture, the poet has been the one man who not only sees clearly the twin poles of the artificial distinction but who has sought a synthesis, a unity which each has been aware must underlie the duality. In order to achieve insight into the essential harmony of existence, poets have the problem of duality in widely varied terms and have utilized different poles with which to express the dichotomy. One has seen the duality in terms of human psychology and metaphysics, expressing on one hand the senses and the passive intellect, and on the other, the rational or active intellect; and has spoken of reality as existent in form (in the Platonic sense) and actuality. This is the medieval philosophical position of Guido Cavalcanti, to whom love is ultimately a Platonic form or idea which works through the sense response, uniting the duality of human consciousness via the machinations of the possible and active intellects, and working toward a mystic contemplation of the super-sensuous ideal. Love, ther; is a Platonic form which, although a disembodied ideal, has a physical actualty by virtue of the fact that it has its origin in the response of the senses to physical 3 beauty. Through the workings of the dual nature of the human consciousness, love becomes a force which unifies the duality in contemplation of a transcendent ideal. Another poet, Ezra Pound, writing in a cultural milieu which had postulated and demonstrated the metaphysical inter-connection of 2 matter and energy in a cryptic statement of physical reality, (E=MC ), states the dichotomy in terms of epitemology, utilizing the poles of perception and conception. Perception is an intuitive apprehension of truth operating through one or more of the senses; while conception denotes the formulation of truth in the mind. As Pound uses these terms, the emphasis is upon perception as an intuitive, imaginative and immediate apprehension, and he stesses conception as a more conscious intellectual process divorced from imagination. The integration of these responses allows the application of intelligence to the world of Process, clarity of vision and a more complete apprehension of the position of the individual vis-a-vis the Process. Love, to Pound, has still both the Platonic form or ideal and the Physical actuality; however, in its machinations as a unifying force, love becomes compassion or fellow-feeling and enable the individual to manifest the Confucian concept of l_i_, or brotherly deference. As each individual achieves the quality of Poundian compassion the possibility for the attain• ment of a just and lasting social order increases. Thus, love has, to one poet the power to unify the mind in contemplation of a transcendent ideal, while to another love has the potential to create an equitable and all-pervasive social order. To a third poet, Robert Duncan, the world of Process has become equatable with the Biblical Chaos, threatening engulfment and dissolution of form, meaning the consciousness. The poem itself, being a microcosm of the larger universe, repeats the disorder and the lack of definite form which the poet experiences in the world of Process. No longer is the poem an 4 expression of the total sentience and consciousness of man, but rather, it exists as a scaled-down universe of disorder in which the poet plumbs in order to discover his own identity. Love, in its ideal aspect, is decidedly the Poundian compassion and is still necessary to the establishment of both personal and social order; however, the emphasis of the poem is upon the surrounding darkness and human bestiality.
Recommended publications
  • A Hell of a City: Dante's Inferno on the Road to Rome ([email protected]) DANTE's WORKS Rime (Rhymes): D.'S Lyrical Poems, Cons
    A Hell of a City: Dante’s Inferno on the Road to Rome ([email protected]) DANTE’S WORKS Rime (Rhymes): D.'s lyrical poems, consisting of sonnets, canzoni, ballate, and sestine, written between 1283 [?] and 1308 [?]. A large proportion of these belong to the Vita Nuova, and a few to the Convivio; the rest appear to be independent pieces, though the rime petrose (or “stony poems,” Rime c-ciii), so called from the frequent recurrence in them of the word pietra, form a special group, as does the six sonnet tenzone with Forese Donati: http://etcweb.princeton.edu/dante/pdp/rime.html (Testo critico della Societa' Dantesca Italiana; Florence: Societa' Dantesca Italiana, 1960. Edited by Michele Barbi. Translated by K. Foster and P. Boyde.) Vita nova (The New Life): Thirty-one of Dante's lyrics surrounded by an unprecedented self-commentary forming a narrative of his love for Beatrice (1293?). D.'s New Life, i.e. according to some his 'young life', but more probably his 'life made new' by his love for Beatrice. The work is written in Italian, partly in prose partly in verse (prosimetron), the prose text being a vehicle for the introduction, the narrative of his love story, and the interpretation of the poems. The work features 25 sonnets (of which 2 are irregular), 5 canzoni (2 of which are imperfect), and 1 ballata: http://etcweb.princeton.edu/dante/pdp/vnuova.html (Testo critico della Società Dantesca Italiana; Florence: Società Dantesca Italiana, 1960. Edited by Michele Barbi. Translated by Mark Musa.) In the Vita Nuova, which is addressed to his 'first friend', Guido Cavalcanti, D.
    [Show full text]
  • Lyrical Quest Father and Sons
    Lyric Quests Guinizzelli and Cavalcanti we do not find is a concerted attempt to direct people in the the verse of a lesser forebear, as he effects his own lesser tran- living of their everyday lives, or to provide an anatomy of sition. 45 The passage from love poetry to moral poetry is a morals as Giraut does within the limits of the chivalric code crucial one, with a direct bearing on the Comedy; as the initiator and does within a much larger Christian and civic of that passage, the launcher of that transition, Guittone is here scheme.- The category of poet of rectitude is in fact not available implicitly recognized-as the only one of Dante's lyric precur- to the lyric poets of the Comedy; rather, they may aspire to a sors who could actively imagine, if not the Comedy itself, at poetics of erotic conversion, like Folquet. The two lyric poets least the space that the Comedy would later fill. in Dante's lexicon who require such a category, Giraut and Guittone, are rejected out of hand, their authority as precursors denied, their presence in the Comedy entirely negative. Within Fathers and Sons: Guinizzelli and Cavalcanti this general picture, however, we find one possible textual echo with some suggestive implications. The Comedy's first invo- If, in the Comedy, Guittone is a presence, repeatedly vilified, cation to the Muse, a alto ingegno, or m'aiutate; / Cavalcanti is an absence, just as systematically denied his due. a mente che scrivesti cia ch'io vidi, I qui si parra la tua nobi- We have already touched on Cavalcanti's pivotal role as Dante's litate" ("0 Muses, 0 high genius, help me now; 0 memory that early mentor, his first freely chosen vernacular poetic aucta- wrote down what 1 saw, here will your nobility appear" [Inf, ritas.
    [Show full text]
  • Donna Me Prega” and Dino’S Glosses
    Heliotropia 2.1 (2004) http://www.heliotropia.org Boccaccio, Cavalcanti’s Canzone “Donna me prega” and Dino’s Glosses he enigmatic, indeed disturbing figure of Guido Cavalcanti (1259– 1300) exercised the imagination of his contemporaries, especially of T his fellow poets. Without naming him once, Dante talks about Guido in his youthful work, the Vita nuova, telling us that Cavalcanti was the “primo de li miei amici” (VN III), and that he was one of those who replied poetically to Dante’s first sonnet. Dante also refers to Guido’s senhal, Gio- vanna/Primavera (VN XXIV). The whole of Dante’s treatise, as a specifi- cally vernacular composition, is dedicated to this first friend (VN XXX). Amongst Dante’s Rime, also, there is a companionship sonnet addressed to Cavalcanti, “Guido, i’ vorrei che tu e Lapo ed io,” to which the older poet responded in verse. The most memorable mention by Dante occurs in canto X of Inferno, where Guido is the “grand absent,” asked after by his damned father, Ca- valcante de’ Cavalcanti. The accent in the exchange is on Guido’s implied “altezza d’ingegno,” shared with Dante (X.59), and his disdain for some- thing — unspecified — which Dante by now was pursuing (poetry? theol- ogy?). The poet later resurfaces as an allusion in Purgatorio XI.97–99, where, in an object lesson in humility, literary primacy is passed through the Guidos, presumably from Guinizelli through Cavalcanti, and on to (perhaps) Dante himself. Guido Orlandi, who wrote the enquiry sonnet, “Onde si move e donde nasce Amore?” which occasioned Cavalcanti’s famous reply, the doctrinal canzone “Donna me prega,” paints a picture of the poet in “Amico, i’ saccio ben che sa’ limare,” stressing Guido’s verbal prowess, but also his consid- erable intellectual ambition, verging on vanity.
    [Show full text]
  • Guido Cavalcanti (1255-1300) Donna Me Prega Cavalcanti Was An
    Rime Guido Cavalcanti (1255-1300) Donna me prega Cavalcanti was an important member of the famous poetic movement known as Dolce Stil Novo. Inspired by the medieval troubadour tradition, his canzone anatomizes love using a metaphysical vocabulary of grief and transfiguration. Cavalcanti believed that the individual soul is mortal and that poetry can resurrect our deadened sensorium. Sight is an important poetic faculty, which fuels the passion and takes possession of the two lovers. XXVII - Donna me prega, - per ch'eo voglio dire Donna me prega, - per ch'eo voglio dire d'un accidente - che sovente - è fero ed è si altero - ch'è chiamato amore: sì chi lo nega - possa 'l ver sentire! Ed a presente - conoscente - chero, 05 perch'io no sper - ch'om di basso core a tal ragione porti canoscenza: ché senza - natural dimostramemto non ho talento - di voler provare là dove posa, e chi lo fa creare, 10 e qual sia sua vertute e sua potenza, l'essenza - poi e ciascun suo movimento, e 'l piacimento - che 'l fa dire amare, e s'omo per veder lo pò mostrare. In quella parte - dove sta memora 15 prende suo stato, - sì formato, - come diaffan da lume, - d'una scuritate la qual da Marte - vène, e fa demora; elli è creato - ed ha sensato - nome, d'alma costume - e di cor volontate. 20 Vèn da veduta forma che s'intende, che prende - nel possibile intelletto, come in subietto, - loco e dimoranza. In quella parte mai non ha pesanza perché da qualitate non descende: 25 resplende - in sé perpetual effetto; non ha diletto - ma consideranza; sì che non pote largir simiglianza.
    [Show full text]
  • Page 1 of 4 “Circle 6, Canto 10” Guy P. Raffa Heresy Dante Opts for the Most Generic Conception of Heresy--The Denial Of
    “Circle 6, Canto 10” Guy P. Raffa Heresy Dante opts for the most generic conception of heresy--the denial of the soul's immortality (Inf. 10.15)--perhaps in deference to spiritual and philosophical positions of specific characters he wishes to feature here, or perhaps for the opportunity to present an especially effective form of contrapasso: heretical souls eternally tormented in fiery tombs. More commonly, heresy in the Middle Ages was a product of acrimonious disputes over Christian doctrine, in particular the theologically correct ways of understanding the Trinity and Christ. Crusades were waged against "heretical sects," and individuals accused of other crimes or sins--e.g., witchcraft, usury, sodomy--were frequently labeled heretics as well. Heresy, according to a theological argument based on the dividing of Jesus' tunic by Roman soldiers (Matthew 27:35), was traditionally viewed as an act of division, a symbolic laceration in the community of "true" believers. This may help explain why divisive, partisan politics is such a prominent theme in Dante's encounter with Farinata. Set in a northern Italian monastery, Umberto Eco's best-selling novel The Name of the Rose (1980)--made into a film (1986) starring Sean Connery, Christian Slater, and F. Murray Abraham--provides a learned and entertaining portrayal of heretics and their persecutors only a few decades after the time of Dante's poem. Farinata Farinata cuts an imposing figure--rising out of his burning tomb "from the waist up" and seeming to "have great contempt for hell"--when Dante turns to address him in the circle of the heretics (Inf.
    [Show full text]
  • Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy – Inferno
    DIVINE COMEDY -INFERNO DANTE ALIGHIERI HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW ENGLISH TRANSLATION AND NOTES PAUL GUSTAVE DORE´ ILLUSTRATIONS JOSEF NYGRIN PDF PREPARATION AND TYPESETTING ENGLISH TRANSLATION AND NOTES Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ILLUSTRATIONS Paul Gustave Dor´e Released under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial Licence. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/us/ You are free: to share – to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work; to remix – to make derivative works. Under the following conditions: attribution – you must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work); noncommercial – you may not use this work for commercial purposes. Any of the above conditions can be waived if you get permission from the copyright holder. English translation and notes by H. W. Longfellow obtained from http://dante.ilt.columbia.edu/new/comedy/. Scans of illustrations by P. G. Dor´e obtained from http://www.danshort.com/dc/, scanned by Dan Short, used with permission. MIKTEXLATEX typesetting by Josef Nygrin, in Jan & Feb 2008. http://www.paskvil.com/ Some rights reserved c 2008 Josef Nygrin Contents Canto 1 1 Canto 2 9 Canto 3 16 Canto 4 23 Canto 5 30 Canto 6 38 Canto 7 44 Canto 8 51 Canto 9 58 Canto 10 65 Canto 11 71 Canto 12 77 Canto 13 85 Canto 14 93 Canto 15 99 Canto 16 104 Canto 17 110 Canto 18 116 Canto 19 124 Canto 20 131 Canto 21 136 Canto 22 143 Canto 23 150 Canto 24 158 Canto 25 164 Canto 26 171 Canto 27 177 Canto 28 183 Canto 29 192 Canto 30 200 Canto 31 207 Canto 32 215 Canto 33 222 Canto 34 231 Dante Alighieri 239 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 245 Paul Gustave Dor´e 251 Some rights reserved c 2008 Josef Nygrin http://www.paskvil.com/ Inferno Figure 1: Midway upon the journey of our life I found myself within a forest dark..
    [Show full text]
  • {Dоwnlоаd/Rеаd PDF Bооk} Divine Comedy: Inferno/Dante
    DIVINE COMEDY: INFERNO/DANTE PDF, EPUB, EBOOK Dante | 224 pages | 03 Sep 2007 | SIMON & SCHUSTER | 9781416500230 | English | New York, United States Divine Comedy: Inferno/Dante PDF Book There are so many different interpretations of their symbolic significance that each reader can assign a specific meaning, but basically suffice it to say that together they represent obstacles to Dante's discovering the true light on the mountain. Lives of the Popes: The Pontiffs from St. Sayers, Hell , notes on Canto V, p. The rivalry between the two parties not only set one city against another, but also divided individual cities and families into factions. The Divine Comedy , Italian La divina commedia , original name La commedia , long narrative poem written in Italian circa —21 by Dante. Each Bolgia has different kinds of people who sin is fraud:. Business Essay Writing. The passage across the Acheron, however, is undescribed, since Dante faints and does not awaken until they reach the other side. Download as PDF Printable version. Give Feedback External Websites. In this world, they were buffeted about by their passions; in Hell, they are buffeted about by the winds of passion, as they eternally clasp each other. Puccio Sciancato remains unchanged for the time being. Help Learn to edit Community portal Recent changes Upload file. Each of the parts of the journey are full of dead souls who suffer trying to rid themselves of their sins, or simply survive in the afterlife. When they enter Inferno, they see an inscription on its gate:. Divine Comedy Inferno. Law Essay Writing. EssayPro Writers. These are the souls of people who in life took no sides; the opportunists who were for neither good nor evil, but instead were merely concerned with themselves.
    [Show full text]
  • Dante and His Circle, with the Italian Poets Preceding Him (1100-1200
    HANDBOUND AT THE UNI\TERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS Digitized by tine Internet Arcliive in 2007 witli funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation littp://www.arcliive.org/details/danteliiscirclewiOOrossuoft /[^ K^^J DANTE AND HIS CIRCLE. r^ /jj DANTE AND HIS CIRCLE WUH THE ITALIAN POETS PRECEDING HIM (l lOO— I200— 1300) A COLLECTION OF LYRICS TRANSLATED IN THE ORIGINAL METRES BY DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETII PART T. DANTE'S VITA NUOVA. ETa I POETS OF DANTE'S CIRCLE PART n. rOETS CHIEFLY BEFORE DANTE A NE W EDITION WITH PREFACE BY WILLIAM M. ROSSETTI ELLIS AND ELVEY LONDON 1892 All rights reserved PRINTED BV HAZRLL, WATSON, AND VINBY, LD. LONDON AND AVLESBUKY. y PREFACE TO THE PRESENT EDITION. DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI published in 1861 his book The Early Italian Poets, which is the first form of the present book named Dante and his Circle. Ever since its first publication this series of translations has occupied, I think, a somewhat peculiar position ; partly as being the only form in which a large portion of the poems here treated are available for English readers; and partly because the Italian compositions have so special a character of their own, and the translator has entered so keenly into their spirit, and has reinforced this with so manifest a ^ poetic tone and savour proper to himself, that the ^fc versions have taken rank as a sort of cross between Hptranslated and original work. They have been accepted ^F as bringing the English reader as close to the mediaeval ^^ Italians as he is ever likely to be brought ; and also as ^introducing him to the tone and quality of Rossetti's own mind and hand in poetic production.
    [Show full text]
  • Extension Reaching the Beloved in Cavalcanti, Dante, and Petrarch
    https://doi.org/10.37050/ci-18_05 MANUELE GRAGNOLATI FRANCESCA SOUTHERDEN Extension Reaching the Beloved in Cavalcanti, Dante, and Petrarch CITE AS: Manuele Gragnolati and Francesca Southerden, ‘Extension: Reaching the Beloved in Cavalcanti, Dante, and Petrarch’, in Manuele Gragnolati and Francesca Southerden, Possibilities of Lyric: Reading Petrarch in Dialogue. With an Epilogue by Antonella Anedda Angioy, Cultural Inquiry, 18 (Berlin: ICI Berlin Press, 2020), pp. 111–33 <https://doi.org/10.37050/ ci-18_05> Manuele Gragnolati and Francesca Souther- den, Possibilities of Lyric: Reading Petrarch in Dialogue. With an Epilogue by Antonella RIGHTS STATEMENT: Anedda Angioy, Cultural Inquiry, 18 (Berlin: ICI Berlin Press, 2020), pp. 111–33 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution- ShareAlike 4.0 International License. The ICI Berlin Repository is a multi-disciplinary open access archive for the dissemination of scientific research documents related to the ICI Berlin, whether they are originally published by ICI Berlin or elsewhere. Unless noted otherwise, the documents are made available under a Creative Commons Attribution- ShareAlike 4.o International License, which means that you are free to share and adapt the material, provided you give appropriate credit, indicate any changes, and distribute under the same license. See http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ for further details. In particular, you should indicate all the information contained in the cite-as section above. 5. Extension Reaching the Beloved in Cavalcanti, Dante, and Petrarch As in Chapter 4, we read here three poems by Cavalcanti, Dante, and Petrarch that have to do with the encounter with the beloved and its effects on the lover: the ballata ‘Perch’i’ no spero di tornar giammai’ and the sonnets ‘Oltra la spera che più larga gira’ and ‘Levòmmi il mio penser in parte ov’era’ (Rvf 302).
    [Show full text]
  • Dante and Cavalcanti(On Making Distinctionsin Mattersof Love): Infernov in Its Lyriccontext
    Dante and Cavalcanti(On Making Distinctionsin Mattersof Love): Infernov in Its LyricContext TEODOLINDA BAROLINI lyric context of Infernov is a great deal richer and more com- plex than the routine citations of Guido Guinizzelli's Al corgentil rempairasempre amore vis-a-vis Francesca's Amor cWal corgentil ratto s'apprendewould suggest.1 While we have integrated Francesca'sself-con- gratulatory exploitation of Guinizzellian principles on love and inborn nobility into our reading of Infernov, her blatant citational tactics seem to have obscured the importance of the lyric tradition for other parts of the canto. I will attempt in this essay to cast a wider net with respect to Infernov and the Italian lyric tradition, and to explore how Dante fashions the canto as a meditation on that tradition and that discourse- quint- essentially a discourse of desire. The choice of a lyric context for the treatment of lust is in itself unusual and should not be taken for granted; it is important to note that a treat- ment of lust need have little or nothing to do with a discourse of desire. The souls of Canto v are explicitly defined as peccatorcamali, and yet Dante's treatment of them differs enormously from the treatment of carnal sinners in vision literature or in moral didactic poetry like that of Bonvesin da la Riva. The visions give us a richer sense of the cultural options available to Dante as he designed his underworld and thus provide a con- text which, though typically ignored by the Commedictscommentators, both ancient and modern, is extremely useful for putting what Dante does in perspective.2 The visions tend to treat the sins of incontinence with particularasper- 31 Dante Studies, CXVI, 1998 ity and cruelty; Dante instead treats them with comparative mildness.
    [Show full text]
  • The First Italian Ovidian Poems and Their Occitan Models
    Chapter 2 Examples (Not) to Follow: The First Italian Ovidian Poems and Their Occitan Models Ovid was widely read in medieval Italy. The previous chapter discussed the cultural and intellectual milieus in which this occurred and the different forms Ovidian texts could take. Reading Ovid, for instance, could mean learning Latin using his poems, or finding Ovidian excerpts in florilegia and prose writ- ings, or reading other poetic works, Ovidian in inspiration, and so on — the thematic and generic variety of Ovid’s works and the even greater variety and range of their medieval artistic afterlives (in different languages, genres, modes of interpretation) mean that the intertwined paths of transmission and inspi- ration are often hard to untangle. While the previous chapter provided an in- troduction to these texts and contexts, in the present chapter I shift the focus from reading to writing: from “Italian readers of Ovid” to “Italian writers about Ovid.” In the previous chapter, we have seen that the acts of reading and writ- ing are closely connected: the scribe, compiler, commentator, and author (the four different “makers of books” in St. Bonaventure’s definition) are first and foremost readers of the works they transmit; and among the many texts where Italian readers could encounter Ovid were medieval works of poetry in Latin, Occitan, and Old French, considered “Ovidian” because of some kind of con- tact with or inspiration from Ovid’s works. Thus, when we ask how important Ovid was as a model and source of inspiration for the Italian poets writing po- etry in the vernacular for the first time, this question needs to be accompanied by another: which Ovid are we talking about? In addressing these questions for the first generations of Italian poets, in this chapter I identify the crucial role of Occitan poetry — another vernacular literature which flourished before the birth of Italian literature, and which in many ways offered the Italian poets an example to adopt and alter Ovidian ma- terial.
    [Show full text]
  • Vertical Readings in Dante's Comedy
    Vertical Readings in Dante’s Comedy Volume 1 EDITED BY GEORGE CORBETT AND HEATHER WEBB To access digital resources including: blog posts videos online appendices and to purchase copies of this book in: hardback paperback ebook editions Go to: https://www.openbookpublishers.com/product/367 Open Book Publishers is a non-profit independent initiative. We rely on sales and donations to continue publishing high-quality academic works. Vertical Readings in Dante’s Comedy Volume 1 edited by George Corbett and Heather Webb http://www.openbookpublishers.com © George Corbett and Heather Webb. Copyright of individual chapters is maintained by the chapter’s author. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0). This license allows you to share, copy, distribute and transmit the work; to adapt the work and to make commercial use of the work providing attribution is made to the author (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Attribution should include the following information: George Corbett and Heather Webb (eds.), Vertical Readings in Dante’s ‘Comedy’. Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2015. http://dx.doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0066 Further details about CC BY licenses are available at http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/ All external links were active on 30/07/2015 unless otherwise stated. Digital material and resources associated with this volume are available at http:// www.openbookpublishers.com/isbn/9781783741724 ISBN Paperback: 978-1-78374-172-4 ISBN Hardback: 978-1-78374-173-1 ISBN Digital (PDF): 978-1-78374-174-8 ISBN Digital ebook (epub): 978-1-78374-175-5 ISBN Digital ebook (mobi): 978-1-78374-176-2 DOI: 10.11647/OBP.0066 Cover image: Domenico di Michelino, La Commedia illumina Firenze (1465).
    [Show full text]