DOCSLIB.ORG

And the “Divine Comedy”

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
And the “Divine Comedy” LINGUA INDISCIPLINATA. A STUDY OF TRANSGRESSIVE SPEECH IN THE “ROMANCE OF THE ROSE” AND THE “DIVINE COMEDY” by Gabriella Ildiko Baika BA, “Babes-Bolyai-University,” Cluj-Napoca, Romania, 1991 MA, “Babes-Bolyai-University,” Cluj-Napoca, Romania, 1992 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the University of Pittsburgh in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Pittsburgh, 2007 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH FACULTY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES This dissertation was presented by Gabriella Ildiko Baika It was defended on December 1, 2006 and approved by Dissertation Advisor: Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Department of French and Italian Co-Advisor: Dennis Looney, Associate Professor, Department of French and Italian Diana Mériz, Associate Professor, Department of French and Italian Bruce Venarde, Associate Professor, Department of History ii Copyright © by Gabriella Ildiko Baika 2007 iii LINGUA INDISCIPLINATA. A STUDY OF TRANSGRESSIVE SPEECH IN THE “ROMANCE OF THE ROSE” AND THE “DIVINE COMEDY” Gabriella Baika, PhD University of Pittsburgh, 2007 My dissertation is an investigation of the two masterpieces of medieval, allegorical literature from the perspective of the Latin moral tradition of their time. Discussing Jean de Meun and Dante’s obsessive concern with the sinfulness of speech, I relate the numerous verbal transgressions treated in the Romance of the Rose and the Divine Comedy to what historians of moral philosophy have called “the golden age of the sins of the tongue” (1190-1260), a time span during which moralists, theologians and canonists wrote a great number of Latin texts on peccata linguae. I argue that the radical inclusion of the sins of speech among the other classes of sins treated in the Romance of the Rose and the Divine Comedy is to be accounted for in light of the major thirteenth-century treatises on peccata linguae. While Jean de Meun, in the wake of Alain of Lille, treats the sins of the tongue in a dispersed manner, without regard to a classification based on the gravity of the sins, Dante follows a scholastic approach and assigns most of the sins of tongue he is dealing with to the infernal area of Fraud, in a hierarchical order. Taking up elements from William Peraldus's Summa vitiorum and Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologica, both very popular at the time, Dante constructs his own micro-system of peccata linguae, a system within a system. Written shortly after the golden age of the sins of the tongue, the Romance of the Rose and the Divine Comedy extend this cultural period and transfer the preoccupation with sinfulness of human speech from the exclusive sphere of Latin moral tracts to the realm of vernacular poetry. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE.................................................................................................................................. VII 1.0 INTRODUCTION........................................................................................................ 1 2.0 MEDIEVAL AUTHORITIES ON TRANSGRESSIVE SPEECH........................ 15 2.1 PERALDUS’S EIGHTH “CAPITAL” VICE................................................. 17 2.2 LAURENT D’ORLÉANS AND LES PECHIÉS DE LA LANGUE............... 27 2.3 DOMENICO CAVALCA ................................................................................. 33 2.3.1 The Pungilingua (‘The Wounding Tongue’) ........................................... 37 2.4 THOMAS AQUINAS AND THE SINS OF WORD....................................... 45 3.0 FROM JEAN DE MEUN’S MULTIDISCURSIVE DISPERSAL TO DANTE’S SYSTEM OF SINS...................................................................................................................... 54 3.1 ORIGIN, FUNCTIONS AND SINS OF SPEECH IN THE “ROMANCE OF THE ROSE”........................................................................................................................ 55 3.1.1 Lady Reason on speech and its transgressions......................................... 55 3.1.2 Nature on the (verbal) vices of humans .................................................... 71 3.1.3 Genius’s Grievances against Feminine Speech ........................................ 82 3.2 DANTE’S MORAL APPROACH TO SPEECH............................................ 90 4.0 LINGUA DOLOSA (‘THE GUILEFUL TONGUE’): SPEAKING UNDER THE SIGN OF FRAUD ..................................................................................................................... 113 v 4.1 FLATTERY AS FORM OF TRANSGRESSIVE SPEECH........................ 115 4.1.1 The art of losange in the Rose .................................................................. 120 4.1.2 Ornaments of speech: seduction and flattery in Canto XVIII of the Inferno ..................................................................................................................... 128 4.2 EVIL COUNSELING, OR WHAT THE OLD WOMAN AND FRIEND HAVE IN COMMON WITH ULYSSES AND GUIDO DA MONTEFELTRO........ 142 4.2.1 The Lover’s evil counselors...................................................................... 142 4.2.2 The name of the sin: medieval moralists on pravum consilium and Ulysses and Guido’s sin ........................................................................................... 157 4.3 ‘DOUBLE-TALK’ (BILINGUIUM) IN FAUS SEMBLANT’S DISCOURSE ........................................................................................................................... 187 4.4 SOWING OF DISCORD AND FALSIFYING OF WORDS: TWO VERBAL SINS ASSOCIATED WITH FRAUD IN DANTE’S INFERNO.................................. 209 4.4.1 The seminator di scandalo e di scisma...................................................... 210 4.4.2 The verbal falsador ................................................................................... 226 5.0 DISTORTING THE VERTICAL DIMENSION: THE PROBLEM OF BLASPHEMY ........................................................................................................................... 244 5.1 THE “BLASPHEMIES” OF JEAN DE MEUN ........................................... 246 5.2 THE SIN OF BLASPHEMY IN DANTE...................................................... 270 CONCLUSIONS ....................................................................................................................... 301 BIBLIOGRAPHY..................................................................................................................... 307 vi PREFACE I am first deeply indebted (and grateful) to Professor Yves Citton, our former director of graduate studies, to whom I owe my presence here. His guidance during the first years of my Ph.D. program was invaluable, and I could not think of a more fitting hommage to him than this dissertation. I also owe many sincere thanks to my two dissertation directors, Professor Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski and Professor Dennis Looney, not only for kindly accepting to direct my work, but also for their constant support throughout these five years. I could not be what I am today as a “medievalist” without what they have taught me. Professionally, the things I have learned from two of the finest medievalists in the United States are today my most cherished treasure. On a more personal level, the words fail me when I try to recall all the efforts and dedication Dr. Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski invested in our relationship. Without her, I would not have gotten so far. I am also grateful to my dantisti friends, Dr. Marino Balducci and Dr. Massimo Seriacopi, for my Italian scholarship and our long discussions on Dante hermeneutics, at the Carla Rossi Academy and the Società Dantesca Italiana. Professors Franca Petrucci Nardelli and Armando Petrucci, with whom I had the unique opportunity to work at the Newberry Library in Chicago, have also contributed to this dissertation, by giving me the knowledge and confidence necessary for approaching medieval manuscripts. In terms of scholarships, I have been extremely vii fortunate, as I have benefited from three one-year research fellowships, generously granted by the University of Pittsburgh. The credit for my doctoral work must also go to the Medieval Academy of America, whose grant has represented for me an extraordinary morale booster and has given me the opportunity to finalize my work in European archives. I would also like to thank my wonderful parents, for their unconditional patience, love and support, and last, but not least, to my beautiful daughter Mary-Annick, the true “rationale” behind my work. This Ph.D. dissertation is as much mine as it is theirs. viii 1.0 INTRODUCTION As early as the fifteenth century, critical readers of the Romance of the Rose and the Divine Comedy likened the two poetic narratives, discovering analogies between them and listing a common concern with human vices as first among the poem’s many striking similarities. Christine de Pizan and Laurent de Premierfait were the first to comment upon the two medieval allegorical poems from a comparative point of view, thus pioneering a tradition that would extend to the present day, a tradition of associating the Rose and the Comedy from various viewpoints and using the poems as illustrations of specific aspects related to the Middle Ages.1 The year 1878 marked a turning point in this comparative tradition with the discovery of the Fiore and the Detto d’Amore, two thirteenth-century Italian translations of the Romance of the Rose. Gianfranco Contini and Luigi Vanossi credited Dante Alighieri with penning the Fiore, an authorship that would represent the irrefutable
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Information on Pre-Urban Hymns and Evaluations of Those Who Have Tried to Write “Metrical” Translations—With Good and Poor Examples
    What you need to know about Roman Catholic hymnody: Information on pre-Urban hymns and evaluations of those who have tried to write “metrical” translations—with good and poor examples Criticism of the Urbanite revisions: John Mason Neale (*Rev.), Mediæval Hymns (1851), introduction: “[...] In the third [or classical period, the Roman Church …] submitted to the slavish bondage of a revived Paganism.” Catholic Encyclopedia (1913), Fernand Cabrol (Dom) OSB, “Breviary” (VI. Reforms): Urban VIII, being himself a Humanist, and no mean poet, as witness the hymns of St. Martin and of St. Elizabeth of Portugal, which are of his own composition, desired that the Breviary hymns, which, it must be admitted are sometimes trivial in style and irregular in their prosody, should be corrected according to grammatical rules and put into true meter. To this end, he called in the aid of certain Jesuits of distinguished literary attainments. The corrections made by these purists were so numerous – 952 in all – as to make a profound alteration in the character of some of the hymns. Although some of them without doubt gained in literary style, nevertheless, to the regret of many, they also lost something of their old charm of simplicity and fervor. At the present date, this revision is condemned, out of respect for ancient texts; and surprise may be expressed at the temerity that dared to meddle with the Latinity of a Prudentius, a Sedulius, a Sidonius Apollinaris, a Venantius Fortunatus, an Ambrose, a Paulinus of Aquileia, which, though perhaps lacking the purity of the Golden Age, has, nevertheless, its own peculiar charm.
    [Show full text]
  • Boska Komedia.Pdf
    Dante Alighieri BOSKA KOMEDIA Przekład: Edward Porębowicz ver. 1.20 http://boskakomedia.korona-pl.com UWAGA !!! Tekst został przeze mnie zeskanowany i potraktowany programem OCR. Może zawierać błędy (literówki, itp.) Będę wdzięczny za wszelkie uwagi i komentarze. - 1 - SPIS TREŚCI PIEKŁO.............................................................................................................................................................................4 PIEŚŃ I ..........................................................................................................................................................................5 PIEŚŃ II.........................................................................................................................................................................8 PIEŚŃ III ..................................................................................................................................................................... 11 PIEŚŃ IV ..................................................................................................................................................................... 14 PIEŚŃ V....................................................................................................................................................................... 18 PIEŚŃ VI ..................................................................................................................................................................... 21 PIEŚŃ VII...................................................................................................................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • La Commedia a Teatro. Gli Intepreti Di Dante
    UNIVERSITÀ DEGLI STUDI DI MILANO Facoltà di Studi Umanistici Corso di Laurea Magistrale in Editoria, Culture della Comunicazione e della Moda LA COMMEDIA A TEATRO: GLI INTERPRETI DI DANTE Relatore: Ch.ma Prof.ssa Giuliana NUVOLI Correlatore: Ch.mo Prof. Bruno PISCHEDDA Tesi di laurea di: Greta Maria SPOTTI Matr. 902719 Anno Accademico 2017/2018 2 INTRODUZIONE 1. DANTE IN SCENA: CONSIDERAZIONI GENERALI SULLE TRASPOSIZIONI ORALI DEL POEMA 1.1 La trasmissione orale della Commedia 1.2 La teatralità della Commedia 1.3 I generi della Commedia a teatro 1.4 Il valore didattico delle drammatizzazioni della Commedia 2. INTERPRETARE DANTE 2.1 Introduzione al personaggio di Dante nella Commedia 2.2 Dire Dante: l’esecuzione della Commedia 2.3 Impersonare Dante: la scelta del costume teatrale 2.4 Le chiavi di lettura per Dante e la sua Commedia 3. LA COMMEDIA A TEATRO NELL’OTTOCENTO: L’AVVIO DI UN NUOVO FORMAT CON GUSTAVO MODENA 3.1 Teatro e politica nelle Dantate 3.2 L’eco delle Dantate nelle performance per il sesto centenario della nascita dell’Alighieri 4. INTERPRETARE DANTE NEL XXI SECOLO 4.1 Il Dante di Benigni 4.2 Vergine madre di Lucilla Giagnoni BIBLIOGRAFIA 3 INTRODUZIONE In questa ricerca, La Commedia a teatro: gli interpreti di Dante, prendo in esame modalità e tempi con i quali viene proposta e drammatizzata a teatro la Divina Commedia di Dante Alighieri, opera letteraria alla base della nostra cultura nazionale e che vanta, inoltre, un indiscutibile successo a livello mondiale. In particolare, analizzo come sia mutata l’interpretazione e l’immagine presentata in scena di Dante, autore e, al contempo, personaggio protagonista del poema.
    [Show full text]
  • Divine Comedy” 10/18/20, 2:29 PM
    Dante’s Global Vision: Seeing & Being Seen in the “Divine Comedy” 10/18/20, 2:29 PM Dante’s Global Vision: Seeing & Being Seen in the “Divine Comedy” theimaginativeconservative.org/2015/07/dantes-global-vision-seeing-and-being-seen-in-the-divine- comedy.html Peter Kalkavage July 29, 2015 “The things of friends are common.” —Greek proverb (quoted by Socrates in the Phaedrus) It is a pleasure to be with you today, to visit Belmont University and see Nashville for the very first time. My talk takes its cue from your theme for the year —“Living in a Global Community.” I have chosen to speak about Dante because his global outlook is well suited to this theme. Dante dared to think the whole of all things and to capture his vision in a single poem—the Divine Comedy. Dante’s globalism, his vision of the whole, is not confined to the earth but extends to the entire universe. This includes the invisible, spiritual world as well as the visible, corporeal one. It embraces the human and the divine, the natural and the supernatural. As we know from his writings and the events of his life, Dante cared passionately—one might say, desperately—about community and about “how it goes” with the world. The cosmos for him is the Community of communities. This Community affirms, rather than negates, the human individual and all the smaller, local groups to which we belong: our cities, towns, and neighbourhoods. On a more intimate level, these “little platoons,” as Burke called them, include our families, friendships, romantic attachments, relations with colleagues, and the communal bonds forged by students and their teachers and mentors.
    [Show full text]
  • Prudentius of Troyes (D. 861) and the Reception of the Patristic Tradition in the Carolingian Era
    Prudentius of Troyes (d. 861) and the Reception of the Patristic Tradition in the Carolingian Era by Jared G. Wielfaert A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of History University of Toronto © Copyright by Jared Wielfaert 2015 Prudentius of Troyes (d. 861) and the Reception of the Patristic Tradition in the Carolingian Era Jared Gardner Wielfaert Doctor of Philosophy Department of History University of Toronto 2015 ABSTRACT: This study concerns Prudentius, bishop of Troyes (861), a court scholar, historian, and pastor of the ninth century, whose extant corpus, though relatively extensive, remains unstudied. Born in Spain in the decades following the Frankish conquest of the Spanish march, Prudentius had been recruited to the Carolingian court under Louis the Pious, where he served as a palace chaplain for a twenty year period, before his eventual elevation to the see of Troyes in the 840s. With a career that moved from the frontier to the imperial court center, then back to the local world of the diocese and environment of cathedral libraries, sacred shrines, and local care of souls, the biography of Prudentius provides a frame for synthesis of several prevailing currents in the cultural history of the Carolingian era. His personal connections make him a rare link between the generation of the architects of the Carolingian reforms (Theodulf and Alcuin) and their students (Rabanus Maurus, Prudentius himself) and the great period of fruition of which the work of John Scottus Eriugena is the most widely recogized example. His involvement in the mid-century theological controversy over the doctrine of predestination illustrates the techniques and methods, as well as the concerns and preoccupations, of Carolingian era scholars engaged in the consolidation and interpretation of patristic opinion, particularly, that of Augustine.
    [Show full text]
  • Epic and Autobiography in Dante's Inferno
    Sacred Heart University Review Volume 24 Issue 1 Sacred Heart University Review, Volume XXIV, Article 5 Numbers 1 & 2, Fall 2006/ Spring 2007 March 2010 The oP et in the Mirror: Epic and Autobiography in Dante’s Inferno Simone Marchesi Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.sacredheart.edu/shureview Recommended Citation Marchesi, Simone (2010) "The oeP t in the Mirror: Epic and Autobiography in Dante’s Inferno," Sacred Heart University Review: Vol. 24 : Iss. 1 , Article 5. Available at: http://digitalcommons.sacredheart.edu/shureview/vol24/iss1/5 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the SHU Press Publications at DigitalCommons@SHU. It has been accepted for inclusion in Sacred Heart University Review by an authorized editor of DigitalCommons@SHU. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The oP et in the Mirror: Epic and Autobiography in Dante’s Inferno Cover Page Footnote Simone Marchesi is Assistant Professor of French and Italian at Princeton University. This talk was delivered at Sacred Heart University on April 7, 2006, as part of the College of Arts & Sciences Lecture Series on “The Real and Fabled Worlds of Dante Alighieri.” All English translations in the text from Dante’s Divine Comedy are by Robert Hollander and Jean Hollander, in their edition published by Doubleday/Anchor in 2000. This article is available in Sacred Heart University Review: http://digitalcommons.sacredheart.edu/shureview/vol24/iss1/5 Marchesi: The Poet in the Mirror: Epic and Autobiography in Dante’s Inferno S IMONE M ARCHESI ____________________ The Poet in the Mirror: Epic and Autobiography in Dante’s Inferno Perché cotanto in noi ti specchi? [Why do you reflect yourself so long in us?] Inferno 32.54 Let me begin with an easy question: What is the Divine Comedy? Dante’s poem has been and is many things.
    [Show full text]
  • Virtues and Vices: Examples of Medieval Knowledge Visualization
    2013 17th International Conference on Information Visualisation Virtues and Vices: Examples of Medieval Knowledge Visualization Francis T. Marchese Computer Science Department Pace University NY, NY 10038 USA e-mail: [email protected] Abstract — The concepts of virtues and vices have a long Republic [3], Plato (c. 427 – c. 347 BCE) puts forward the history. This paper discusses their medieval metaphorical and Allegory of the Cave, which communicates his belief that the allegorical representations as examples of knowledge world revealed by our senses is not the real world but rather visualizations, and compares them against the criteria put a poor replica of it, and that the real world can only be forward for the use of contemporary knowledge visualizations. apprehended intellectually. Martianus Capella (c. 410 – 439 It is found that these medieval visualizations exhibit all the CE) employs allegory to stage his encyclopedic work On the essential traits expected of knowledge visualizations, making Marriage of Philology and Mercury, that encompassed the them not only exemplars of a field, but also documentary seven liberal arts (grammar, logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, evidence of early explorations (research) into visually geometry, astronomy, and music), and became a major representing and communicating complex knowledge. influence on medieval education. Macrobius Ambrosius Keywords - knowledge visualization, medieval art, medieval Theodosius (c. 395 – 423 CE), an early medieval information manuscripts, history. visualizer, utilized allegory in his Commentary on the Dream of Scipio (Commentarii in Somnium Scipionis) [4] to put I. INTRODUCTION forward a comprehensive philosophy of nature Educating religious and laity about the underlying moral encompassing arithmetic, astronomy, and cosmology. and theological concepts of virtues and vices was an Metaphor plays an important role in contemporary important part of Christian education during the High and knowledge visualization as well.
    [Show full text]
  • Bodies of Knowledge: the Presentation of Personified Figures in Engraved Allegorical Series Produced in the Netherlands, 1548-1600
    University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 2015 Bodies of Knowledge: The Presentation of Personified Figures in Engraved Allegorical Series Produced in the Netherlands, 1548-1600 Geoffrey Shamos University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the History of Art, Architecture, and Archaeology Commons Recommended Citation Shamos, Geoffrey, "Bodies of Knowledge: The Presentation of Personified Figures in Engraved Allegorical Series Produced in the Netherlands, 1548-1600" (2015). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 1128. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1128 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1128 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Bodies of Knowledge: The Presentation of Personified Figures in Engraved Allegorical Series Produced in the Netherlands, 1548-1600 Abstract During the second half of the sixteenth century, engraved series of allegorical subjects featuring personified figures flourished for several decades in the Low Countries before falling into disfavor. Designed by the Netherlandsâ?? leading artists and cut by professional engravers, such series were collected primarily by the urban intelligentsia, who appreciated the use of personification for the representation of immaterial concepts and for the transmission of knowledge, both in prints and in public spectacles. The pairing of embodied forms and serial format was particularly well suited to the portrayal of abstract themes with multiple components, such as the Four Elements, Four Seasons, Seven Planets, Five Senses, or Seven Virtues and Seven Vices. While many of the themes had existed prior to their adoption in Netherlandish graphics, their pictorial rendering had rarely been so pervasive or systematic.
    [Show full text]
  • Prudentius' Contra Symmachum, Book II Introduction, Translation and Commentary
    Prudentius' Contra Symmachum, Book II Introduction, Translation and Commentary Michael Brown NEWCASTLE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY ------------------------- 201 29877 3 ---------------------------- A thesis submitted to the University of Newcastle upon Tyne for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Faculty of Arts June 2003 Declaration I hereby certify that the work in this thesis is my own except where otherwise acknowledged, and has not been submitted previously at this or any other university. Michael Brown Abstract Prudentius' Contra Symmachum contains a refutation of Symmachus' plea for the retaining of the altar of Victory in the Senate house at Rome which had been removed in 357 and then, after its restoration, probably under Julian, was removed again in 382. Symmachus made a plea for its return in 384 in his Relatio 3. Ambrose wrote two letters (Ep. 17 and 18) urging the emperor to reject Symmachus plea. It is not certain whether the altar was ever returned to the Senate house. It was this debate with Symmachus which Prudentius sought to portray in verse. This he does in the second book of the poem which is the book to be considered here. The first book while mentioning Symmachus, is a routine attack on the pagan gods of Rome and an account of how paganism was overthrown by the emperor Theodosius resulting in Rome adopting Christianity. There has been much debate over whether the two books were conceived as a single composition. This issue is examined again and the conclusion is reached, by a study of the text, that, while Prudentius had it in mind to produce a work of anti-pagan polemic as part of his compendium covering various aspects of Christian life, the work was produced as a whole in 402.
    [Show full text]
  • Note Linguistiche E Lessicali Sul Dramma Dante a Verona Di Angelica Palli
    FRANCESCA FAVARO Amor di patria e culto della Commedia: note linguistiche e lessicali sul dramma Dante a Verona di Angelica Palli In L’Italianistica oggi: ricerca e didattica, Atti del XIX Congresso dell’ADI - Associazione degli Italianisti (Roma, 9-12 settembre 2015), a cura di B. Alfonzetti, T. Cancro, V. Di Iasio, E. Pietrobon, Roma, Adi editore, 2017 Isbn: 978-884675137-9 Come citare: Url = http://www.italianisti.it/Atti-di- Congresso?pg=cms&ext=p&cms_codsec=14&cms_codcms=896 [data consultazione: gg/mm/aaaa] L’Italianistica oggi © Adi editore 2017 FRANCESCA FAVARO Amor di patria e culto della Commedia: note linguistiche e lessicali sul dramma Dante a Verona di Angelica Palli Nella ricca produzione di Angelica Palli Bartolommei (Livorno, 1798-1875), scrittrice i cui interessi letterari risultano inscindibili dal sentimento patriottico e dalla condivisione degli ideali del Risorgimento, spicca un gruppo di azioni teatrali ispirate alla figura di Dante e ai personaggi della Divina Commedia maggiormente significativi per illustrare il tema della discordia civile che lungo i secoli insanguinò la penisola. Il contributo qui presentato offre dunque una lettura e un’interpretazione del dramma Dante a Verona, analizzato principalmente sotto il profilo delle scelte lessicali compiute dall’autrice; caratterizzato dall’avere Dante stesso come protagonista, il dramma conferma la devozione dell’autrice verso l’Alighieri, ‘fondatore’ dell’Italia futura non solo in virtù della lingua che, di fatto, creò con il poema, ma anche per la sua deplorazione,
    [Show full text]
  • The Poetry of Prudentius
    i Portraying the Female in Late Antiquity: The Poetry of Prudentius Lydia Michele Epple University of Florida Gainesville, Florida April 27th, 2011 ii Acknowledgements I am deeply grateful and indebted to so many people for the completion of this thesis that I fear that I could never name them all or begin to repay them. I would like to thank my family, friends and fellow students who have never ceased to offer input and their unwavering support in this endeavor. I would also like to thank my professor Andrea Sterk; without her guidance I never would of made it this far. iii Table of Contents Introduction ............................................................................................................1 Chapter 1: The Hamartigenia ...............................................................................8 The Vanity of a Woman’s Soul ............................................................................9 Vipers and Biblical Women ...............................................................................12 Chapter 2: The Psychomachia ............................................................................16 Greco Roman Virtues and Vices ........................................................................18 Christian Virtues and Vices ................................................................................20 Fusing traditions .................................................................................................22 Chapter 3: The Liber Peristephanon ..................................................................26
    [Show full text]
  • The Apostle As Anchor
    chapter 1 Peter, Popes, Politics and More: the Apostle as Anchor Roald Dijkstra Et iam tenemus obsides fidissimos huius spei, hic nempe iam regnant duo apostolorum principes; alter uocator gentium; alter, cathedram possidens primam, recludit creditas aeternitatis ianuas. Already we hold most trusty sureties for this hope, for already there reign here the two chiefs of the apostles, the one he who called the Gentiles, while the other who occupies the foremost chair opens the gates of eter- nity which were committed to his keeping. Prudentius, Peristephanon 2.457–641 ∵ These verses are exclaimed by Rome’s greatest “native” saint Laurentius in a poem by Prudentius. By doing so, the Roman saint testifies to the prominence of two Christians saints even more powerful and authoritative than himself: Peter and Paul. Prudentius makes Laurentius praise the apostle Peter in a most honourable way by referring to his extraordinary power: he holds the primary see and controls the doors of heaven.2 Both on earth and in the hereafter, Peter 1 I would like to thank Dr Erik Hermans for carefully reading my text. Thanks also go to all the contributors to the volume for sharing their thoughts on Peter, both in oral and written form. Text and translation of Prudentius: Thomson (1961 [1953]), slightly adapted. 2 See Dijkstra (2018) for Peter as the gatekeeper of heaven in early Christian poetry (and art). For more on Peristephanon 2 see Humphries in this volume; more on poetical petrine tradi- tions is found in the contribution by Springer. © Roald Dijkstra, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004425682_002 This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the CC BY-NC 4.0 license.
    [Show full text]