UC Berkeley Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

UC Berkeley Electronic Theses and Dissertations UC Berkeley UC Berkeley Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Pastoral at the Boundaries: The Hybridization of Genre in the Fourteenth-Century Italian Eclogue Revival Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0w23t9r3 Author Combs-Schilling, Jonathan David Publication Date 2012 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California Pastoral at the Boundaries: The Hybridization of Genre in the Fourteenth-Century Italian Eclogue Revival By Jonathan David Combs-Schilling A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Italian Studies in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in Charge: Professor Albert Russell Ascoli, Chair Professor Steven Botterill Professor Timothy Hampton Fall 2012 Abstract Pastoral at the Boundaries: The Hybridization of Genre in the Fourteenth-Century Italian Eclogue Revival by Jonathan David Combs-Schilling Doctor of Philosophy in Italian Studies University of California, Berkeley Professor Albert Russell Ascoli, Chair This dissertation demonstrates that one of the principal aspects of pastoral is its identity as a metagenre by focusing attention on the Latin pastoral production of the fourteenth-century eclogue revival in Italy, and by integrating that production into larger estimations of pastoral’s history. Long taken to be a closed circuit within, or a derivative offshoot of, the genre’s history, the eclogues of Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio at once accentuated the metageneric elements of classical pastoral and influenced the future of pastoral representations through their consistent exploration of pastoral’s boundary- crossing double move—an expansionary movement outward into the representational terrain of other genres and a recuperative (and incorporative) return to the fold. My first chapter, “Dante’s Two Reeds: Pastoral Hierarchies and Hybrids,” examines Dante in terms of this double move, positions his eclogues at the origins of a new era of pastoral representation, and addresses why the first continuous tradition of pastoral production in the history of the genre begins with their 165 verses. I individuate one of the principal causes of their influence to be the epistolary context out of which they were forged. By sending his eclogues as letters to the protohumanist Giovanni del Virgilio, Dante harnesses the boundary-traversing movement of epistolarity and invests the metageneric movement of pastoral with a new critical thrust. With this new orientation, Dante utilizes the genre’s self-figured humility to interrogate and overturn Giovanni’s rigid distinctions between high and low literature and, in the systematically hybrid second eclogue, produces a pastoral fiction that is at once low and high. There is both a vertical and a horizontal aspect to Dante’s use of pastoral as metagenre, and though the two are conjoined, my next two chapters argue that Petrarch explores its vertical aspect through a methodical comparison with epic, while Boccaccio explores its horizontal aspect through a narratologically innovative breach of pastoral’s diegetic horizon. In chapter 2, “Translatio bucolicorum: Pastoral and the Place of Epic in Petrarch’s Bucolicum carmen,” through an analysis of his first eclogue and his letters, in particular Familiares 21.15, I reveal that Petrarch conceived of his collection as a response to the letter that Giovanni had sent Dante, whereby he not only attempts to replace Dante as the originator of the pastoral revival but also figures his collection as an 1 “answer” to Giovanni’s request for a new Latin epic. In this light, I proceed to examine Petrarch’s pervasive appropriation of epic tropes and strategies, in particular translatio imperii, as he extends the implications of Dante’s high-low hybrid to pastoralize the book of epic, and in the process generates the first modern collection of eclogues. In my third chapter, “Tending to the Boundary: Between Inner and Outer Pastoral in Boccaccio’s Buccolicum carmen,” I redress critical estimations of Boccaccio’s usage of allegory in his eclogue collection to show that it is not a departure from “authentic” pastoral but rather works in concert with the other innovations he brings to the genre, most noticeably the sharp increase in dramatic movement within the eclogues and the narratological complexity deployed in the songs of their protagonists. By narrativizing the arrival of allegory to the landscape of pastoral, as well as its departure, Boccaccio drastically increases the genre’s representational purview while also maintaining the autonomy of its fictions. This provokes a doubling of the landscape, which becomes mapped into two distinct but overlapping spaces: an inner pastoral, a more conventional Arcadian scene, and an outer pastoral, a liminal space where the genre encounters and pastoralizes the system of literature beyond its borders. The cumulative effect of this inquiry is a two-fold recognition: first, while still respecting the distinctions between the pastoral poetics of the tre corone, we can meaningfully speak of the fourteenth-century eclogue revival as a movement; and, second, it was a movement that helped shape pastoral’s future as a metagenre. 2 For Kathleen McDermott and William Sloane Coffin senza di voi languisce il cor i Table of Contents Acknowledgments iii Introduction Pastoral as Metagenre 1-10 Chapter 1 Dante’s High and Low Reeds: 11-44 Pastoral Hierarchies and Hybrids Chapter 2 Translatio bucolicorum: 45-82 Pastoral and the Place of Epic in Petrarch’s Bucolicum carmen Chapter 3 Tending to the Boundary: 83-122 Between Inner and Outer Pastoral in Boccaccio’s Buccolicum carmen Bibliography 123-35 ii Acknowledgments That I should have become so invested in the affairs of shepherds surprises no one more so than me. Yet with the dissertation now complete, I can see that the seeds of this project were planted in the years 2000-2001, while I was still an undergraduate, during my studies with Professors Jean Howard and Teodolinda Barolini. With the former, I first encountered the green fields of pastoral, in the form of Spenser’s Shepheardes Calender, and under the latter’s guidance I began to approach the three poets at the heart of this dissertation: Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio. Without the two of them, I would not do what I do, and for this and much more, I give them my most heartfelt thanks. My greatest debt is owed to the members of my dissertation committee. Professor Albert Russell Ascoli has been an illuminating guide, a tireless reader, and a nourishing mentor at every stage of this project and has become a dear friend in the process. I will happily carry my professional and personal debt to him for many years to come. My deepest thanks as well to Professor Timothy Hampton, in whose office hours I first forged my take on pastoral. His intellectual exuberance has made this process more enjoyable, and his probing questions have made me a better reader. Finally, Professor Steven Botterill, through his encouragement, advice, consistent acts of kindness, and sharp eye for grammatical infelicities has improved the process of, and hopefully the writing contained within, this dissertation. It has been an unqualified pleasure to work with all three of them. My gratitude extends to other Berkeley professors. In particular, I am most grateful for Louise George Clubb’s warm and generous mentorship. It was an honor to be one of her final students, and I hope to be able to explore as deeply and defend as eloquently a genre that is dear to her heart. My thanks, as well, to Professors Mia Fuller and Barbara Spackman who have improved and enlivened my time at Berkeley. Over the years, there have also been many others who have offered their receptive ears to my take on pastoral, and so I extend many thanks to the following professors for their insightful and encouraging comments: Theodore J. Cachey Jr., William J. Kennedy, Ronald L. Martinez, Giuseppe Mazzotta, Jane Tylus, and David Quint. The quality of my experience in graduate school has been improved immeasurably by the community that I have encountered here. I offer my thanks, first, to Aileen Astorga Feng and Stephanie Malia Hom who have offered me invaluable advice and kind encouragement at every turn. My heartfelt thanks as well to Sole Anatrone, Chris Atwood, Greg Bonetti, Angela Matilde Capodivacca, Chris Churchill, Kfir Cohen, Craig Davidson, Armando Di Carlo, Leslie Elwell, Marisa Escolar, Jennifer Johung, Kate Noson, Rebecca Falkoff, Nandini Pandey, Camille Peters, Ariel Shannon, Sara Troyani, Rhiannon Welch, Fabiana Woodfin, and Brandon Woolf. And my many, many thanks and love to Natalie Cleaver, Anthony Martire, Scott Millspaugh, and Kelly Rafferty, who have made these last years the happiest of my life. Finally, my deepest gratitude to my parents for their ceaseless support and boundless affection. iii Introduction Pastoral as Metagenre Few literary categories have been laden with more ponderous and variegated forms of non-literary significance than has pastoral. In the two millennia of its reception history, many a reader has considered it light fare, a pleasant but frivolous retreat from the cares of the modern world (or, in Samuel Johnson’s more caustic formulation, an “easy, vulgar, and therefore disgusting” poetic enterprise),1 yet those critics who have found a greater substance beneath the humble garb of shepherds have taken pastoral very seriously indeed. The discrete boundaries
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]
  • De Vulgari Eloquentia
    The De vulgari eloquentia, written by Dante in the early years of the fourteenth century, is the only known work of medieval literary theory to have been produced by a practising poet, and the first to assert the intrinsic superiority of living, vernacular languages over Latin. Its opening consideration of language as a sign-system includes foreshadowings of twentieth-century semiotics, and later sections contain the first serious effort at literary criticism based on close ana- lytical reading since the classical era. Steven Botterill here offers an accurate Latin text and a readable English translation of the treatise, together with notes and introductory material, thus making available a work which is relevant not only to Dante's poetry and the history of Italian literature, but to our whole understanding of late medieval poetics, linguistics and literary practice. Cambridge Medieval Classics General editor PETER DRONKE, FBA Professor of Medieval Latin Literature, University of Cambridge This series is designed to provide bilingual editions of medieval Latin and Greek works of prose, poetry, and drama dating from the period c. 350 - c. 1350. The original texts are offered on left-hand pages, with facing-page versions in lively modern English, newly translated for the series. There are introductions, and explanatory and textual notes. The Cambridge Medieval Classics series allows access, often for the first time, to out- standing writing of the Middle Ages, with an emphasis on texts that are representative of key literary traditions and which offer penetrating insights into the culture of med- ieval Europe. Medieval politics, society, humour, and religion are all represented in the range of editions produced here.
    [Show full text]
  • Ovid's Wand: the Brush of History and the Mirror of Ekphrasis Presented In
    Ovid’s Wand: the brush of history and the mirror of ekphrasis Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Reid Hardaway, M.A. Graduate Program in English The Ohio State University 2017 Dissertation Committee: Ethan Knapp, Advisor Karen Winstead Sarah-Grace Heller Copyright by Reid Hardaway 2017 Abstract The recent work on the manuscript reception of Ovid’s canon and Ovidian commentaries in western Europe has affirmed the author’s significant literary influence in the late Mid- dle Ages. The production and reception of Ovidinia flourished, and Ovid’s poems in- creasingly became read as coherent compositions rather than dissected for bits of moral exempla. In particular, the Metamorphoses profoundly affects the literary landscape of late medieval France and England. Allusions to Ovid’s poem reemerge throughout the late Middle Ages at defining moments of poetic self-consciousness, most often through figures of ekphrasis, the use of poetry in order to portray other media of art. By examin- ing such moments from a selection of influential medieval poems, the mind of the late medieval poet reveals itself in perpetual contestation with the images and figures of an Ovidian lineage, but the contest entails the paradoxical construction of poetic identity, which forces the poet to impose the haunting shadow of literary history onto the mirror of his or her craft. ii Acknowledgements The following work would not have been possible without the considerate and insightful assistance of my advisor, Ethan Knapp, as well as the other members of the dissertation committee, Karen Winstead and Sarah-Grace Heller.
    [Show full text]
  • Homer's Odyssey and the Image of Penelope in Renaissance Art Giancarlo FIORENZA
    223 Homer's Odyssey and the Image of Penelope in Renaissance Art Giancarlo FIORENZA The epic heroine Penelope captured the Renaissance literary and artistic imagination, beginning with Petrarch and the recovery of Homer's poetry through its translation into Latin. Only a very small number of humanists in the 14'h century were able to read Homer in the Greek original, and Petrarch's friend Leontius Pilatus produced for him long-awaited Latin translations of the Iliad 1 and Odyssey in the 1360s • Profoundly moved by his ability to finally compre­ hend the two epics (albeit in translation), Petrarch composed a remarkable letter addressed to Homer in which he compares himself to Penelope: "Your Penelope cannot have waited longer nor with more eager expectation for her Ulysses than I did for you. At last, though, my hope was fading gradually away. Except for a few of the opening lines of certain books, from which there seemed to flash upon me the face of a friend whom I had been longing to behold, a momen­ tary glimpse, dim through the distance, or, rather, the sight of his streaming hair, as he vanished from my view- except for this no hint of a Latin Homer had come to me, and I had no hope of being able ever to see you face to face"'. The themes of anticipation and fulfillment, and longing and return that are associated with the figure of Penelope coincide with the rediscovery of ancient texts. To encounter Homer for the first time in a language with which one was 3 familiar was as much a personal as a literary experience • As Nancy Struever observes, Petrarch's Le Familiari, a collection of letters addressed to contemporary friends and ancient authors, values friendship and intimate exchange because 4 it leads to knowledge and affective reward • Books on their own (Le Familiari, XII, 6) constituted surrogate friends with whom Petrarch could correspond, con­ verse, exchange ideas, and share his affections.
    [Show full text]
  • Petrarch and Boccaccio Mimesis
    Petrarch and Boccaccio Mimesis Romanische Literaturen der Welt Herausgegeben von Ottmar Ette Band 61 Petrarch and Boccaccio The Unity of Knowledge in the Pre-modern World Edited by Igor Candido An electronic version of this book is freely available, thanks to the support of libraries working with Knowledge Unlatched. KU is a collaborative initiative designed to make high quality books Open Access. More information about the initiative and links to the Open Access version can be found at www.knowledgeunlatched.org. The Open Access book is available at www.degruyter.com. ISBN 978-3-11-042514-7 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-041930-6 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-041958-0 ISSN 0178-7489 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 license. For more information, see http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress. Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2018 Igor Candido, published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Typesetting: Konvertus, Haarlem Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck ♾ Printed on acid-free paper Printed in Germany www.degruyter.com Dedicated to Ronald Witt (1932–2017) Contents Acknowledgments IX Igor Candido Introduction 1 H. Wayne Storey The
    [Show full text]
  • Petrarch and Boccaccio: the Rewriting of Griselda's Tale
    Heliotropia 16-17 (2019-20) http://www.heliotropia.org Petrarch and Boccaccio: The Rewriting of Griselda’s Tale (Dec. 10.10). A Rhetorical Debate on Latin and Vernacular Languages∗ he story of Griselda has always raised many interpretative problems. One could perhaps suggest that when Boccaccio has his storytellers T quarrel over the meaning of the last novella, he is anticipating the critical controversy that this text has sparked throughout its long and suc- cessful career in Europe. The first critic and reader of Boccaccio’s tale was Petrarch, whom Boc- caccio met for the first time in Florence in 1350. The following year, Boccac- cio met the elder poet in Padua to invite him, unsuccessfully, to assume a position as a professor at Florence’s Studium. The cultural and personal bond between Boccaccio and Petrarch dates back to that time.1 This friend- ship, marked by intense correspondence and mutual invitations, was always affected by an inherent tension over Dante’s poetics. For Petrarch, the Com- media was irreconcilable with his well-known aristocratic and elitist con- ception of literature; Boccaccio, however, soon became Dante’s ‘advocate,’ promoting the poetics of the Commedia.2 The Dante debate between Boccaccio and Petrarch expresses a differ- ence of opinion concerning vernacular literature, its dignity and its appro- priateness for dealing with issues traditionally entrusted to Latin. Famili- ares 21.15, addressed to Boccaccio, is an important token of Petrarch’s atti- tude towards Dante. Rejecting any charge of envy, Petrarch presents the is- sue of language as the real reason he dismisses Dante’s poetry: ∗ I would like to thank Prof.
    [Show full text]
  • Jennifer Rushworth
    Jennifer Rushworth Petrarch’s French Fortunes: negotiating the relationship between poet, place, and identity in the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries This article reconsiders Petrarch’s French afterlife by juxtaposing a time of long-recognised Petrarchism — the sixteenth century — with a less familiar and more modern Petrarchist age, the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Of particular interest is how French writers from both periods understand and represent Petrarch’s associations with place. This variously proposed, geographically defined identity is in turn regional (Tuscan/Provençal) and national (Italian/French), located by river (Arno/Sorgue) and city (Florence/Avignon). I argue that sixteenth-century poets stress Petrarch’s foreignness, thereby keeping him at a safe distance, whereas later writers embrace Petrarch as French, drawing the poet closer to (their) home. The medieval Italian poet Francesco Petrarca (known in English as Petrarch, in French as Pétrarque) is the author of many works in Latin and in Italian, in poetry and in prose (for the most complete and accessible account, see Kirkham and Maggi). Since the sixteenth century, however, his fame has resided in one particular vernacular form: the sonnet. In his poetic collection Rerum vulgarium fragmenta, more commonly and simply known as the Canzoniere, 317 of the total 366 are sonnets. These poems reflect on the experience of love and later of grief, centred on the poet’s beloved Laura, and have been so often imitated by later poets as to have given rise to a poetic movement named after the poet: Petrarchism. In the words of Jonathan Culler, “Petrarch’s Canzoniere established a grammar for the European love lyric: a set of tropes, images, oppositions (fire and ice), and typical scenarios that permitted generations of poets throughout Europe to exercise their ingenuity in the construction of love sonnets” (69).
    [Show full text]
  • Monuments More Enduring Than Bronze: Boccaccio and Paper Inscriptions
    Heliotropia - An online journal of research to Boccaccio scholars Volume 4 Volume 4 (2007) Issue 1 Issue 1-2 Article 5 2007 Monuments More Enduring than Bronze: Boccaccio and Paper Inscriptions Jonathan Usher University of Edinburgh Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/heliotropia Recommended Citation Usher, Jonathan (2007) "Monuments More Enduring than Bronze: Boccaccio and Paper Inscriptions," Heliotropia - An online journal of research to Boccaccio scholars: Vol. 4 : Iss. 1 , Article 5. Available at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/heliotropia/vol4/iss1/5 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Heliotropia - An online journal of research to Boccaccio scholars by an authorized editor of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Usher: Monuments More Enduring than Bronze: Boccaccio and Paper Inscript Heliotropia 4.1 (2007) http://www.heliotropia.org Monuments More Enduring than Bronze: Boccaccio and Paper Inscriptions n 20 October 1374, in almost the last year of his life, Boccaccio fi- nally received in Certaldo the sad news from Francescuolo da Bros- Osano, Petrarch’s son-in-law, that the great poet had breathed his last in his retreat at Arqua, in mid-July. We do not have Francesco’s letter, which presumably touched also upon a tidy bequest of florins to purchase for his old friend a warm garment for nocturnal study and research: in- somnia was a shared affliction.1 Boccaccio’s delayed reply of 3 November, offering his condolences to Francescuolo, far from being a spontaneous outpouring of grief, is a carefully composed piece of consolatory rhetoric, a genre famously essayed in a long letter of 1361 to the exiled Pino de’ Rossi.2 First Boccaccio treats Petrarch’s elevation to a better life, rhetorically balancing the deceased’s tranquil joy in heaven with the letter-writer’s own continued travails in this earthly life, beset as he is by (graphically de- scribed) illness.
    [Show full text]
  • Klasszikus, Bibliai És Középkori Reminiszcenciák Petrarca Sine Nomine-Leveleiben
    ERTL PÉTER Klasszikus, bibliai és középkori reminiszcenciák Petrarca Sine nomine-leveleiben The aim of this study is to identify and analyze some classical, biblical and medieval literary reminiscences in Petrarch’s collection of satirical letters against the Papal court of Avignon, called Liber sine nomine. The examples examined illustrate how the poet combined the classical tradition with the Christian one and, thanks to the passages evoked, provided his own text with a further, political-polemical meaning. Moreover, the identification of an allusion to Virgil’s Aeneid allows a slight correction to be made to the critical text of the ninth epistle.1 „[…] amikor figyelmes olvasás közben hasznos mondásokra találsz […], tégy oda jelzést. Ezek segítségével, mint egy horoggal, visszatarthatod azokat, ha el akarnának távozni emlékezetedből.”2 Petrarca Secretum című dialógusában Augustinus ezt a mnemotechnikai tanácsot adja a költő alteregójának, Franciscusnak, hogy az olvasmányaiban talált hasznos gondolatok, szentenciák segítségével leküzdhesse indulatait, különösen kóros lelki szomorúságát.3 1 A publikáció elkészítését az MTA-SZTE Antikvitás és reneszánsz: források és recepció Kutatócsoport (TK2016-126) támogatta. 2 Secr., II, Francesco PETRARCA, Kétségeim titkos küzdelme (Secretum), ford. LÁZÁR István Dávid, Szeged, Lazi, 1999, 82. A költő műveire végig a „Petrarca del centenario” sorozatban (Firenze, Le Lettere) használt rövidítésekkel hivatkozom. 3 A melankóliába hajló lelki bágyadtságként, különös kéjjel járó szomorúságként, keserűségként
    [Show full text]
  • Dante's Divine Comedy
    Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism Volume 10 | Issue 1 Article 7 2017 Dante’s Divine Comedy: A Pastoral Subversion Katie Francom Brigham Young University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/criterion Part of the Italian Literature Commons BYU ScholarsArchive Citation Francom, Katie (2017) "Dante’s Divine Comedy: A Pastoral Subversion," Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism: Vol. 10 : Iss. 1 , Article 7. Available at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/criterion/vol10/iss1/7 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the All Journals at BYU ScholarsArchive. It has been accepted for inclusion in Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism by an authorized editor of BYU ScholarsArchive. For more information, please contact [email protected], [email protected]. Dante’s Divine Comedy: A Pastoral Subversion Cover Page Footnote A huge thank you to Dr. Michael Lavers for encouraging me to write and publish this article and to Adrian Ramjoué for his editing expertise. This article is available in Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/criterion/vol10/iss1/7 Dante’s Divine Comedy A Pastoral Subversion Katie Francom In Virgil’s writings, “pastoral poetry came to be used as a vehicle for allegory or veiled social and political comment” (“Pastoral Poetry”). It is thus fitting that Dante, in his attempt to write what he believed to be the greatest allegory ever created, chose Virgil to be his literary and narrative guide. Dante pulls from what Prue Shaw, a prominent Dante critic, calls the “fertilising powers” of Virgil’s allegorical and pastoral influences throughout The Divine Comedy (172).
    [Show full text]
  • American Dante Bibliography for 1984.Pdf
    American Dante Bibliography for 1984 Christopher Kleinhenz and Anthony L. Pellegrini This bibliography is intended to include the Dante translations published in this country in 1984 and all Dante studies and reviews published in 1984 that are in any sense American. The latter criterion is construed to include foreign reviews of American publications pertaining to Dante. For their invaluable assistance in the preparation of this bibliography and its annotations our special thanks go to the following graduate students at the University of Wisconsin: Tonia Bernardi, Giuseppe Candela, Scott Eagleburger, Jay Filipiak, Edward Hagman, John Meany, Pauline Scott, Elizabeth Serrin, and Scott Troyan. Translations The Divine Comedy. Vol. 1: Inferno. Translated with an introduction, notes, and commentary by Mark Musa. Harmondsworth and New York: Penguin Books, 1984. 430 p. illus., diagrs. This translation, originally published in 1971 by Indiana University Press (see Dante Studies, XC, 175), is here reprinted without the R.M. Powers drawings but with the addition of diagrams of Dante’s Hell, “An Introduction to Dante and His Works,” a “Glossary and Index of Persons and Places,” and a “Selected Bibliography.” Also, the arguments are prefixed to their respective cantos. The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri. [II. Purgatorio.] A verse translation, with an introduction, by Allen Mandelbaum. Notes by Laury Magnus, Allen Mandelbaum, and Anthony Oldcorn, with Daniel Feldman. Drawings by Barry Moser. Toronto, N.Y.: Bantam Books, 1984. xxx, 411 p. illus., diagrs (Bantam Classics.) Paperback reprint of the original edition by University of California Press, 1982 (see Dante Studies, CI, 193), with the addition of diagrams and annotations to the text.
    [Show full text]
  • Redating Pericles: a Re-Examination of Shakespeare’S
    REDATING PERICLES: A RE-EXAMINATION OF SHAKESPEARE’S PERICLES AS AN ELIZABETHAN PLAY A THESIS IN Theatre Presented to the Faculty of the University of Missouri-Kansas City in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree MASTER OF ARTS by Michelle Elaine Stelting University of Missouri Kansas City December 2015 © 2015 MICHELLE ELAINE STELTING ALL RIGHTS RESERVED REDATING PERICLES: A RE-EXAMINATION OF SHAKESPEARE’S PERICLES AS AN ELIZABETHAN PLAY Michelle Elaine Stelting, Candidate for the Master of Arts Degree University of Missouri-Kansas City, 2015 ABSTRACT Pericles's apparent inferiority to Shakespeare’s mature works raises many questions for scholars. Was Shakespeare collaborating with an inferior playwright or playwrights? Did he allow so many corrupt printed versions of his works after 1604 out of indifference? Re-dating Pericles from the Jacobean to the Elizabethan era answers these questions and reveals previously unexamined connections between topical references in Pericles and events and personalities in the court of Elizabeth I: John Dee, Philip Sidney, Edward de Vere, and many others. The tournament impresas, alchemical symbolism of the story, and its lunar and astronomical imagery suggest Pericles was written long before 1608. Finally, Shakespeare’s focus on father-daughter relationships, and the importance of Marina, the daughter, as the heroine of the story, point to Pericles as written for a young girl. This thesis uses topical references, Shakespeare’s anachronisms, Shakespeare’s sources, stylometry and textual analysis, as well as Henslowe’s diary, the Stationers' Register, and other contemporary documentary evidence to determine whether there may have been versions of Pericles circulating before the accepted date of 1608.
    [Show full text]