Sarah Jane Todd
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DREAM-VISIONS IN BOCCACCIO AND PETRARCH Sarah Jane Todd Submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. The University of Leeds School of Languages, Cultures and Societies February 2015 The candidate confirms that the work submitted is her own and that appropriate credit has been given where reference has been made to the work of others. This copy has been supplied on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. © 2015 The University of Leeds and Sarah Jane Todd. The right of Sarah Jane Todd to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am grateful to the University of Leeds and the Leeds Centre for Dante Studies for providing funding for this research. I would like to thank my two supervisors, Brian Richardson and Matthew Treherne, who have showed me immense kindness, patience, and encouragement throughout this project. Thanks also to Guyda Armstrong and Stephen Milner who first encouraged me to pursue postgraduate study, and who continue to offer both academic and moral support. My family and friends have played such integral and invaluable roles in the research and preparation of this thesis, helping me to maintain perspective and a sense of humour. Special thanks are due to my parents, who have provided financial and emotional support at every stage of my research; I would have simply floundered without their encouragement and guidance. I cannot name everyone to whom I am grateful, but would like to extend my most sincere appreciation to my brother Dominic and to my wonderful friends, who have, in different ways, enabled me to complete this project. Finally, I would like to thank JB for providing me with unquestioning love and unfailing support. You brighten my northern sky. ii ABSTRACT Dream-visions formed an integral part of literature since the Ancient Greek period, with discussions about their prophetic and revelatory value appearing alongside poetry, prose, and autobiographical accounts of visions. By the Middle Ages the popularity of the oneiric form reached a new height. This thesis examines the presence of dream-visions in three works from the fourteenth century: Boccaccio’s Amorosa visione and Corbaccio, and Petrarch’s Triumphi. It looks specifically at the ways in which the two authors drew upon existing oneiric sources in the composition of their own texts. Chapter 1 contextualises the thesis. It examines the different models of dream-vision texts which would have been available to Boccaccio and Petrarch when composing their oneiric narratives, and looks at the specific terminology used to describe dreams and their varying functions within biblical, fictional, and philosophical writings. This in turn helps to establish a set of conventions for dream-vision literature, which Boccaccio and Petrarch would have been able consciously to employ (or not) within their own texts. Chapter 2 examines the ways in which Boccaccio and Petrarch discuss and use dreams and visions within their non-dream-vision texts. It looks not only at their fictional dream-visions, but also at autobiographical and philosophical works written by the authors on the subject of dreaming, the presence of visions within their respective poems and prose, and discussions within their texts regarding the specific terminology one should use to discuss different types of dream experience. Chapter 3 considers the ways in which Boccaccio experiments with form and structure within the Amorosa visione, and the impact this has upon the resulting dream-vision text. It looks specifically at the use of the spirit-guide motif and Boccaccio’s unusual employment of the framing dream. Similarly, Chapter 4 looks at the various ways Petrarch deviates from the established norms of the dream-vision traditions within his Triumphi by employing multiple and simultaneous visions within a single text. In Chapter 5 Boccaccio’s Corbaccio is examined in the context of various literary traditions. The chapter considers how Boccaccio engages with his predecessors in the creation of his dream-vision text, and the ways in which he combines various literary elements in order to create a iii work which is both innovative and reliant on the encyclopaedic knowledge of oneiric works he possesses. In the conclusion the findings from each chapter are drawn together to present a view of the Amorosa visione, Triumphi, and Corbaccio as works which are simultaneously rooted in established traditions while at the same time testing the boundaries of the very genres to which they belong. iv CONTENTS Acknowledgements i. A Note on Dating and Sources vi. i. Introduction 1 i.1 Methodology 21 1. Dream-Visions Before Boccaccio and Petrarch 26 1.1 Dreams and Visions in the Classical Period 27 1.2 The Biblical Tradition 38 1.3 Dreams, Visions, and Theologians 48 1.4 Late-Medieval Dream-Visions 62 1.5 Conclusions 84 2. Boccaccio’s and Petrarch’s Views on Dream-Visions 86 2.1 Petrarch’s Engagement with Dreams and Visions 88 2.2 Boccaccio’s Engagament with Dreams and Visions 98 2.3 Conclusions 111 3. The Amorosa visione as a Dream-Vision 113 3.1 The History of the Text 114 3.2 The Acrostic Sonnets 117 3.3 Terminology 123 3.4 The Spirit-Guide 127 3.5 The Triumphal Motif 132 3.6 Boccaccio’s use of loci 140 3.7 Boccaccio and Intertextuality 145 3.8 Conclusions 149 4. Dreams and Visions in Petrarch’s Triumphi 152 4.1 Narrative Structure 154 4.2 Terminology 156 4.3 The Spirit-Guide(s) 162 4.4 Triumphal Imagery 167 4.5 Spring-Time Setting 169 4.6 The Triumphi and Intertextuality 172 4.7 Conclusions 180 5. Boccaccio’s Corbaccio: Traditions, Intentions and the 183 Dream-Vision 5.1 The Corbaccio as a Dream-Vision 188 5.2 Texts and Traditions 190 5.3 Terminology 203 5.4 The Spirit-Guide 207 5.5 Conclusions 211 Conclusion 215 v Bibliography 225 Primary Sources 225 Secondary Sources 231 vi A NOTE ON DATING AND SOURCES Both Boccaccio’s and Petrarch’s works are notoriously difficult to date with any degree of accuracy, since the two men were constantly editing and rewriting their texts until their deaths in 1375 and 1374 respectively. I have provided discussions within the individual chapters regarding the dates of composition of the Amorosa visione, Triumphi, and Corbaccio, and have arranged the chapters in a rough chronological order to reflect these discussions. Since the aim of this thesis is to establish the different ways in which the two authors interact with the dream-vision tradition, and how the various conventions are made manifest within the oneiric narratives of Boccaccio and Petrarch, I have provided quotations from earlier works in the original language only when that language is one which either Petrarch or Boccaccio would have been able to read. Greek and Arabic sources are cited in English translation only, since neither author could fluently read Greek, and would have almost certainly relied upon Latin translations of texts. It is not possible to ascertain accurately which texts were available as models for either Boccaccio or Petrarch in the composition of his own narratives, and not all of the texts discussed within this thesis were definitely read by either writer. Their inclusion within this study, however, reflects the fact that they would have almost certainly been known in certain forms by educated contemporary readers of the two authors and, as such, would have influenced the reception of the three narratives. 1 INTRODUCTION This thesis examines the use of dream-visions in works by two fourteenth-century Italian writers: Giovanni Boccaccio and Francesco Petrarch. The works are those in which dream-visions have a particularly important role to play: Boccaccio’s Amorosa visione and Corbaccio and Petrarch’s Triumphi. Although dreams and visions occur in many other works of these two authors, these three are their only texts that can accurately be described as dream-visions, since they are entirely framed by the external structure of a dream. While there have been several studies into the role of dream-visions in near-contemporary texts such as Dante’s Commedia and Guillaume de Lorris’s and Jean de Meun’s Roman de la rose,1 and while certain studies explore Boccaccio’s and Petrarch’s use of specific dream-vision tropes, a comprehensive and comparative investigation into the types of dream-visions being used by the two authors, the specific tropes made manifest within such dreams, and how these visions are reported within the narratives, is missing from the critical literature surrounding the Amorosa visione, Triumphi, and Corbaccio. Studies of these three texts, as this introductory chapter demonstrates, have tended to focus on the intertextual relationships between these dream narratives and the works of Dante, or else have only offered analyses of Boccaccio’s or Petrarch’s use of individual oneiric tropes. This thesis begins to address some of the heretofore unanswered questions regarding how the two authors built and managed reader expectations of their vision texts. All three of the texts studied within this thesis are, in their own 1 For Dante’s use of dream-visions, see: Charles Speroni, ‘Dante’s Prophetic Morning-Dreams’, Studies in Philology, 45 (1948), 50-59; Dino S. Cervigni, Dante’s Poetry of Dreams (Florence: Olschki, 1986); Tibor Wlassics, ‘Dante’s Surrealism: The Oneiric Overture to the Comedy’, in The Flight of Ulysses: Studies in Memory of Emmanuel Hatzantonis, ed. by Augustus A. Mastri (Chapel Hill, NC: Annali d’Italianistica, 1997), pp. 34-40; V.