Dante and the Making of a Modern Author Albert Russell Ascoli Frontmatter More Information

Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-88236-1 - Dante and the Making of a Modern Author Albert Russell Ascoli Frontmatter More information

DANTE AND THE MAKING OF A MODERN AUTHOR

Leading scholar Albert Russell Ascoli traces the metamorphosis of Dante Alighieri – minor Florentine aristocrat, political activist and exile, amateur philosopher and theologian, daring experimental poet – into Dante, author of the Divine Comedy and perhaps the most self- consciously “authoritative” cultural figure in the Western canon. This is the first comprehensive introduction to Dante’s evolving, transformative relationship to medieval ideas of authorship and authority from the early Vita Nuova, through the unfinished treatises, The Banquet and On Vernacular Eloquence, to the works of his maturity, Monarchy and the Divine Comedy. Ascoli reveals how Dante anticipates modern notions of personalized, creative authorship and the phenomenon of “Renaissance self-fashioning.” Unusually, the book examines Dante’s career as a whole, offering an important new point of access not only to the Dantean oeuvre, but also to the history and theory of authorship in the larger Italian and European traditions.

albert russell ascoli is Gladys Arata Terrill Distinguished Professor in the Department of Italian Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.

DANTE AND THE MAKING OF A MODERN AUTHOR

by ALBERT RUSSELL ASCOLI

cambridge university press Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sao˜ Paulo, Delhi Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge cb2 8ru,UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York

www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521882361 C Albert Russell Ascoli 2008

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 2008

Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge

A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library

isbn 978-0-521-88236-1 hardback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

For Barbara

Contents

Preface page ix Abbreviations of primary texts and translations xiv

introduction 1: The author in history 3 i: What is an “auctor”? 3 ii: The autore of the Commedia 12 iii: Theory 21 iv: History 29 v: Criticism 44 vi: Organization 54 vii: “What is an ‘Other’?” 61

part 1 an author in the works: dante before the commedia 2: Deﬁnitions: The vowels of authority 67 i: The problem of Convivio 67 ii: “Author” and “authority” in medieval discourse 75 iii: Dante’s “maggiore autoritade”(Convivio 1.4.13) 85 iv: “Autore”from“autentin” 97 v: “Autore”from“avieo” 108 vi: “La sua prima voce” 122 3: Language: “Neminem ante nos” 130 i: Vernacular authorship between Convivio and De Vulgari Eloquentia 130 ii: Vernacular and grammar 136 iii: Individuality and universality 149 iv: The poet’s language 157 v: The author’s language in history 169

vii

viii Contents 4: Auto-commentary: Dividing Dante 175 i: “Fo due parti di me” 175 ii: Vita Nova 178 iii: Convivio 201 iv: From Dante divided to the poeta-personaggio 218

part 2 authority in person: dante between monarchia and the commedia 5: “No judgment among equals”: Dividing authority in Dante’s Monarchia 229 i: Monarchia after Convivio and De Vulgari Eloquentia 229 ii: Auctoritas in Monarchia 240 iii: The Monarch’s authority: Conflict and judgment 248 iv: “A Daniel come to judgment” 263 6: Palinode and history 274 i: Historicizing the palinode 274 ii: Palinode manqué in Monarchia 282 iii: Beyond the palinode: Between Monarchia and the Commedia 291 7: The author of the Commedia 301 i: “In death he was undivided” 301 ii: When “Dante” met “Virgil” 307 iii: Virgilio crowns “Dante” 329 iv: A perfect poet 357 v: “Di sé parlando” 369 vi: The perfect poet 400 Works consulted 406 Index of proper names and works cited 445

Preface

When describing a big book in a short title, it seems important, as Virgilio instructs his pupil after the brusque hail of Farinata degli Uberti, that “le parole tue ﬁen conte” ([you] make your words count; Inf. 10.39). For this reason, to adapt Mary McCarthy’s renowned mot, each constituent part of the phrase “Dante and the Making of a Modern Author” has plural meanings, including “and,” “the,” “of” and “a.” Let me begin with the least of these, the vowel-word, “a.” The besetting temptation of single author studies, and those of Dante above all, is to turn one’s object into the pivot around which history – literary, intellectual, and otherwise – turns. And while I would not wish to underestimate the transformative powers of the Dantean oeuvre, nonetheless I would also insist that, my occasional lapses into hyperbole notwithstanding, it represents neither the only way of construing modern authorship nor the only route for arriv- ing at that complex cultural phenomenon. Rather, the ensemble of works known as “Dante” is a symptom, a case – a particular product of and par- ticipant in ongoing historical processes – neither an origin nor an end in itself. Which brings me to the question of “modernity.” There is no doubt that I am interested here in highlighting the relation between Dante and estab- lished scholarly discourses which posit a break between pre-modern and modern, not to say post-modern, modes of authorship – and of discovering how Dante may be said to anticipate – to crystallize if not to invent – traits associated with authorial modernity in the Western tradition. At the same time, however, I am deeply suspicious of the reiﬁcations and periodizations of modernity. Rather, I tend to see the “modern” as paradoxically peren- nial, as a vacant placeholder through which the relation of present to past is continuously construed and lived. Modernus, after all, comes from classical Latin, and moderno turns up four times in the Commedia. Finally, I will argue, what should concern us most is Dante’s own sense of his modernity,

x Preface that is, his status as a living writer faced with an a priori exclusion from the normative, authoritative categories of medieval auctor-hood, notably from the ranks of the long-dead classical auctores (Virgil, Aristotle, et al.), and from the “closed book” of the Bible to whose canonized truths neither jot nor tittle may legitimately be added. At the center of this study,as, more or less, of the title, is the word-concept “making.” The frase fatta calqued here suggests the process by which Dante became a, if not the, modern author: the use of the present participle emphasizing a mobility and a dynamism within that process. Already at this stage, however, there is an ambivalence: who, or what, made Dante into a modern “author”? His place within a complex social and discursive history? His own efforts and his consequent development over the course of a career of some thirty years of writing? Critical narratives which portray him as such, including my own? There is, however, a second sense at play in this word: that is, Dante’s continuous, if evolving, understanding of his authorship as an activity of “making,” at once the artisinal mastery of the techne of poetry (and, more broadly, the disciplines of rhetoric, philosophy, and theology) and an imitatio of the Divine Maker, the Author of all authors, the origin of every legitimate authority. In this sense my book strives to unpack Dante’s compact definition of a poem as “fictio rethorica musicaque poita” (“a fictive invention [a made object] composed poetically with the aid of rhetoric and music”; DVE 2.4.2), along with his etymological derivation of “autore” [author] from avieo to mean a “binder of words,” a maker of languages and of poems. I seek to understand him, then, as a fabricator of fictions, though in a sense not opposed, but neutral to “truth.” I will leave it to my gentle reader to perform an analogous operation on “the,” “and,” and “of,” whose specific polysemies, in any case, follow directly from those just presented. As for the Alpha and Omega of my title, “Dante” and “Author,” suffice it to say here that both have plural referents (the properness of the former name notwithstanding), and that the next seven chapters are aimed at proving just this point. This is long book – no doubt about it – that took too long to write. Its genesis can be traced to my graduate years at Cornell in the late sev- enties and early eighties, although it first began to assume written form in a 1989 essay composed and published with the warm encouragement of Walter Stephens and Kevin Brownlee. In the interim, I have incurred any number of debts, direct and indirect, some of which, I fear, have been lost or deformed in the vagrant book of memory. Much of what this study

Preface xi has become is owed to wonderfully lucky intersections between collegiality and friendship. I cannot, for example, begin to acknowledge or to calcu- late the effects produced by the mentorship of Leonard Barkan and Tilde Sankovitch during my years at Northwestern. Nor can I tell fully how much the overlapping interests and intersecting passions ﬁrst of Tom Stillinger and then, and now, of Ron Martinez have contributed to shaping and reshaping the ideas, and to uncovering the “facts,” that drive this study. To these have been added, at crucial moments, the generosity and rigor of David Quint; the high scholarly standards and warm hospitality of Ted Cachey; the intellectual energy and collegiality of Zyg Baranski;´ the formidable example and kind encouragements of Teo Barolini; the amicable, astute provocations of Robert Durling; the elegant, inimitable teachings of John Freccero. Among my Berkeley colleagues I owe special thanks to the intellectual comrade- ship of Louise George Clubb, David Hult, Timothy Hampton, Victoria Kahn, Ignacio Navarrete, Loren Partridge, Mary Ann Smart, and Randolph Starn. If I now fall to list-making, it is not because those mentioned do not deserve to be singled out, each in her or his own way, but because, to specify the gifts received, the salutary challenges posed, the knowledge conferred (and, of course, the errors corrected and infelicities kindly over- looked) during twenty-some years would become a chapter itself. My thanks then go to Craig Berry, Howard Bloch, Lina Bolzoni, Steven Botterill, Terry Butler, James Carolan, Anthony Cassell, Gary Cestaro, Alison Cornish, Rita Copeland, Jonathan Culler, John Dagenais, Charles Till Davis, Frederick De Armas, Nancy Vine Durling, Carla Freccero, Lisa Freinkel, Disa Gambera, Susan Gaylard, Mary Gaylord, Paul Gehl, Simon Gilson, Stephen Greenblatt, Jody Greene, Steven Grossvogel, Ralph Hexter, Robert Hollander, Olivia Holmes, Amilcare Iannucci, Katherine Ibbett, Rachel Jacoff, Constance Jordan, Carol Kaske, Christopher Kleinhenz, Seth Lerer, Robert Lerner, Toby Levers, Ottfried Lieberknecht, Larry Lipking, Dennis Looney, Joe Lowenstein, Manuela Marchesini, Herbert Marks, John Marino, John Martin, Maria Luisa Meneghetti, Maria Rosa Menocal, Alastair Minnis, Mario Moroni, Gary Saul Morson, Martin Mueller, Ed Muir, John Najemy, Franca Nardelli, Annabel Patterson, Daria Perocco, Armando Petrucci, David Posner, Regina Psaki, Lisa Regan, Mary Beth Rose, Albert Rossi, Manuel Rota, Marco Rufﬁni, Myriam Swennen Ruthenberg, Natasha Sankovitch, Anne-Marie Sankovitch, Brenda Dean Schildgen, Cesare Segre, Phyllis Silverstein, Tom Simpson, Janet Smarr, Barbara Spackman, Paul Stasi, Ruggiero Stefanini, Justin Steinberg,

xii Preface Donatella Stocchi-Perucchio, Marvin Trachtenberg, Mario Trovato, Jane Tylus, Nancy Vickers, David Wallace, Barbara Watts, Jobst Welge, Will West, Ronald Witt, Paul Wright, Michael Wyatt, Irene Zanini, and Sergio Zatti. Over the last few years it has been my great good fortune to have worked with a series of exceptionally able research assistants. Of these I would particularly mention Jamie De Angelis, who saw the manuscript to press, and Aileen Feng, who built its index. To Katharine (Kasey) Evans, whose keen and wise eye scanned every page of an advanced draft of this book, I owe very special thanks. I also owe a significant debt to the fine editorial and production staff of Cambridge University Press, beginning with Linda Bree, and to the two anonymous readers of the manuscript. Finally, I wish to acknowledge, belatedly, and through the hazy filter of my own lengthening career as pedagogue and pedant, a few teachers whose lessons changed me, or rather, helped me change myself, into the person who wrote this book. These include Mary Lacey, Morris Parslow, U. Milo Kauffman, Michael Mullin, Angelina Pietrangeli, Ezio Raimondi, and Thomas M. Greene. At the end of this list of i.o.u.s is its true beginning, Giuseppe Mazzotta, incipit and sine quo non of Dante and the Making of a Modern Author.Idonot know how to thank him. The research and writing of this book were carried out while I was employed first by Northwestern University and then by the University of California, Berkeley, both of which generously afforded me precious leave time for the project on more than one occasion. I am deeply indebted to the Newberry Library (1985–86, 1989–90) and the American Academy in Rome (2004–05) for the use of research facilities while in resi- dence. The following grants also contributed significantly to moving the research and writing forward, however gradually: an Exxon Fellowship at the Newberry Library (1985–6); an ACLS Recent Recipient of the Ph.D. Fellowship (Spring 1986); an NEH Senior Fellowship (1989–90); a North- western Humanities Center Senior Fellowship (1993–94); three University of California, Berkeley Humanities Research Fellowships (Fall 1999, Fall 2001, Fall 2004) and, finally, the Paul Mellon-NEH Rome Prize at the American Academy in Rome (2004–05). Earlier versions of some of the materials incorporated into this study have appeared in print elsewhere. In particular, Chapter 2 derives from “The Vowels of Authority (Dante’s Convivio IV.vi.3–4),” which appeared first in Kevin Brownlee and Walter Stephens (eds.), Discourses of Authority in Medieval and Renaissance Liter- ature, Hanover NH: University Press of New England, 1989,pp.23–46.

Preface xiii A substantial portion of Chapter 3 is revised from “‘Neminem ante nos’: Historicity and Authority in the De vulgari eloquentia,” originally published in Annali d’Italianistica 8 (1991) 186–231. Finally, Chapter 6 and a small portion of Chapter 7 revise “Palinode and History in the Oeuvre of Dante,” from Theodore Cachey (ed.), Dante Now: Current Trends in Dante Studies, South Bend IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995,pp.155–86. I thank all of the original publishers for permission to reprint here.

Abbreviations of primary texts and translations

(These works are cited throughout from the following editions and with the abbreviations given in the left margin. My occasional emendations are indicated by brackets. Where no translation is indicated, translations are my own. Italics in translations, unless otherwise noted, reﬂect my emphasis.)

works of dante alighieri CV Convivio.InOpere minori, vol. 1, part 2. Eds. Cesare Vasoli and Domenico De Robertis. Milan and Naples: Ricciardi, 1988. The Banquet. Trans. and introd. Christopher Ryan. Stanford, CA: Anma Libri, 1989. DC La Commedia secondo l’antica vulgata. Ed. Giorgio Petrocchi. Turin: Einaudi, 1975 Inf. Inferno. Volume 1 of The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri. 3 vols. Ed. and trans. Robert M. Durling; comm. Robert M. Durling and Ronald L. Martinez; illus. Robert Turner. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. Purg. Purgatorio. Volume 2 of The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri, 3 vols. Ed. and trans. Robert M. Durling; comm. Robert M. Durling and Ronald L. Martinez; illus. Robert Turner. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. Par. Paradiso. Volume 3 of The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri, 3 vols. Ed. and trans. Robert M. Durling; comm. Robert M. Durling and Ronald L. Martinez; illus. Robert Turner. Forthcoming Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Consulted in manuscript. DVE De Vulgari Eloquentia. Eds. Pier Vincenzo Mengaldo. In Dante Alighieri. Opere minori, vol. 2. Eds. Pier Vincenzo Mengaldo et al. Milan and Naples: Ricciardi, 1979. xiv

Abbreviations of primary texts and translations xv De Vulgari Eloquentia. Ed. and trans. Steven Botterill. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ECG Epistola XIII [Epistola a Cangrande]. Eds. Arsenio Frugoni and Giorgio Brugnoli. In Dante Alighieri. Opere minori, vol. 2. Eds. Pier Vincenzo Mengaldo et al. Milan and Naples: Ricciardi, 1979. Ecl. “Le Egloghe.” Ed. Enzo Cecchini. In Dante Alighieri. Opere minori, vol. 2. Eds. Pier Vincenzo Mengaldo et al. Milan and Naples: Ricciardi, 1979. Philip Wicksteed and Edmund Gardner. Dante and Giovanni del Virgilio: Including a Critical Edition of Dante’s ‘Ecloghae Latinae’ and of the Poetic Remains of Giovanni del Virgilio. Westminster: Constable, 1902. Eps. Epistole. Arsenio Frugoni and Giorgio Brugnoli. In Dante Alighieri. Opere minori, vol. 2. Eds. Pier Vincenzo Mengaldo et al. Milan and Naples: Ricciardi, 1979. MN Monarchia. Ed. Pier Giorgio Ricci. Vol. 5 in Le opere di Dante Alighieri. Edizione nazionale a cura della Societa` dantesca Italiana. Verona: Mondadori, 1965. Monarchy. Trans. Prudence Shaw. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. [N.B.: references to book, chapter and paragraph are to the Ricci edition, from which the Shaw translation departs at one point. Ricci’s chapter 10 of book 3 is divided by Shaw into two distinct chapters, with a break after Ricci’s paragraph 17.Asa consequence her chapters 12–16 in book 3 correspond to Ricci’s chapters 11–15. Minor variations in chapter division appear in other editions as well.] Q Questio de aqua et terra. Ed. Francesco Mazzoni. In Dante Alighieri. Opere minori, vol. 2. Eds. Pier Vincenzo Mengaldo et al. Milan and Naples: Ricciardi, 1979. VN Vita nova. In Dante Alighieri. Opere minori, vol. 1, pt. 1. Eds. Domenico De Robertis and Gianfranco Contini. Milan and Naples: Ricciardi, 1984.

primary texts cited Aen. Virgil. Aeneid.InEclogues. Georgics. Aeneid I–VI and Aeneid VII–XII. Rev. edn. by G. P. Goold. Trans. H. Rushton

xvi Abbreviations of primary texts and translations Fairclough. Volumes 63–64 of The Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999–2000. AP Horace. “Ars poetica.” In Satires, Epistles and Ars poetica. rev. ed. Trans. H. Rushton Fairclough. In Volume 194 of The Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991. First published 1926. CD Aurelius Augustinus. De civitate Dei. Eds. Bernardus Dombart and Alphonsus Kalb. 2 vols. Volumes 47–48 of Corpus Christianorum. Series Latina. Turnholti: Brepols, 1955. Conf. Aurelius Augustinus. Confessiones. Ed. Lucas Verheijen. Volume 27 of Corpus Christianorum. Series Latina. Turnholti: Brepols, 1981. Cons. Manlius Severinus Boethius. Consolatione philosophiae.Ed. Ludovicus Bieler. Volume 94 of Corpus Christianorum. Series Latina. Turnholti: Brepols, 1957. Boethius. The Consolation of Philosophy. Trans. V. E. Watts. Baltimore, MD: Penguin Books, 1969. DDP Dartmouth Dante Project (http://Dartmouth.Dante.edu). Director Robert Hollander. DRM Guido Vernani. De Reprobationem Monarchie. In Nevio Matteini, ed. Il piu` antico oppositore politico di Dante: Guido Vernani da Rimini: Il testo critico del ‘De Reprobationem Monarchie’. Padua: CEDAM, 1958. Guido Vernani. The Refutation of the Monarchy. Trans. in Anthony Cassell. The ‘Monarchia’ Controversy. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2004. Etym. Isidore of Seville. Etymologiarum Sive Originum Libri XX. 2 vols. Ed. W. M. Lindsay. Oxford: Clarendon, 1911. MD Uguccione da Pisa (Hugutio of Pisa). Derivationes. 2 vols. Ed. Enzo Cecchini. Florence: SISMEL Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2004. Met. Ovid. Metamorphoses. Trans. Frank Justus Miller. In Volumes 42–43 of The Loeb Classical Library. London: W. Heinemann, 1960–1964. First published 1915–16. MP Aristotle. Metaphysics.InThe Basic Works of Aristotle. Ed. and trans. Richard McKeon. New York: Random House, 1941. NE Aristotle. Nichomachean Ethics.InThe Basic Works of Aristotle. Ed. and trans. Richard McKeon. New York: Random House, 1941. PL Patrilogiae Cursus Completus...Series Latina. Ed. J-P. Migne. 221 vols. Paris: Garnier, 1844–64.

Abbreviations of primary texts and translations xvii Pol. Aristotle. Politics.InThe Basic Works of Aristotle. Ed. and trans. Richard McKeon. New York: Random House, 1941. RR Guillaume de Loris and Jean de Meun. Le Roman de la Rose. 3 vols. Ed. Felix´ Lecoy. CFMA. Paris: Champion, 1965–70. ST Thomas Aquinas. Summa Theologiae. Latin Text and English Translation, Introductions, Notes, Appendices, and Glossaries. 60 vols. Cambridge: Blackfriars, 1964–1976. Theb. Publius Papinius Statius. Thebaid, Books I–VII and Thebaid, Books VIII–XII. Ed. and trans. D. R. Shackleton Bailey. In Volumes 207 and 498 of The Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003. Top. Cicero. Topica.In“De Inventione,” “De Optimo Genere Oratorum,” “Topica.” Trans. H. M. Hubbell. In the Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1949.

N.B., All other references in this text use the author-date system and refer to the bibliography to be found at the end of the volume. In general, series of three or fewer references without commentary are placed in parentheses within the body of the text. Longer series of references accompanied by discursive commentary are located in the footnotes.