‘A me stesso di me pietate vène’ Lyric Subjectivity in Guido Cavalcanti’s Rime Valentina Mele Selwyn College December 2019 Corrected version submitted 7 July 2020 This thesis is submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. This thesis is the result of my own work and includes nothing which is the outcome of work done in collaboration except as declared in the Preface and specified in the text. It is not substantially the same as any that I have submitted, or, is being concurrently submitted for a degree or diploma or other qualification at the University of Cambridge or any other University or similar institution except as declared in the Preface and specified in the text. I further state that no substantial part of my thesis has already been submitted, or, is being concurrently submitted for any such degree, diploma or other qualification at the University of Cambridge or any other University or similar institution except as declared in the Preface and specified in the text. It does not exceed the prescribed word limit for the relevant Degree Committee. PhD Candidate: Valentina Mele Title: 'A me stesso di me pietate vène'. Lyric subjectivity in Guido Cavalcanti's Rime. Abstract: This thesis examines articulations of subjectivity in the love-lyric corpus of Guido Cavalcanti (c.1258-1300). That Cavalcanti has a central role in the development of the modern lyric subjectivity is widely accepted in scholarship. The present study aims to deepen current understanding of Cavalcanti’s poetry by analysing ways in which the subject of the enunciation is articulated in the Rime. This research adopts a traditional critical approach (i.e. philological, lexicographic, and semasiological) in conversation with linguistics, narratology, and literary theory. The main textual strategies which contribute to the expression of subjectivity in the cavalcantian corpus are analysed in the context of the Duecento Italian love-lyric tradition. Chapter 1 historicises and maps the main debates concerning the issue of subjectivity in medieval texts which prove significant for reflecting upon the cavalcantian subject and defines the thesis’ methodological framework. Chapter 2 and 3 discuss the most significant results of a comprehensive indexing and analysis of deictics. It provides an examination of the ways in which subjectivity is encoded in the Rime, as related to the main coordinates of the discourse (person, time, space). Chapter 4 examines Cavalcanti’s use of apostrophe and the direction of the poetic message as strategies to redefine the lover-beloved polarity of the lyric tradition. Chapter 5 analyses voices that are “other” to the traditional one of the poet-lover in the Rime and their contribution to the articulation of a specific subjectivity in the lyric discourse. Keywords: Guido Cavalcanti, Italian poetry, lyric subjectivity, deixis, medieval literature, Dante, Guido Guinizzelli CONTENTS Acknowledgements VII Introduction IX Chapter I: Mapping Theories of Subjectivity 1 I.1 Paul Zumthor and the Demystification of Subjectivity 3 I.2 New Approaches to Intertextuality and Subjectivity 6 I.3 Language, Desire, and Subjectivity 9 I.4 Cavalcanti Scholarship 12 I.5 A.C. Spearing’s ‘Subjectless Subjectivity’ 18 I.6 My Methodological Approach 21 Chapter II: Deixis: Person 23 II.1 Deixis: An Overview 27 II.2 Deixis and the Lyric 30 II.3 Deixis: Person 33 II.4 Person Deixis: A Semantic Evaluation of the Rime 43 Conclusion 48 Chapter III: Deixis: Space and Time 51 III.1 Subjectivity and the Demonstrative questa 51 III.2 Other Space and Time References in the Rime 63 Conclusion 82 Appendix 86 Chapter IV: Apostrophe 91 IV.1 Origins and Ritualistic Aspects of Apostrophe 92 IV.2 Apostrophe, the Guizerdon, and Lyric Subjectivity 94 IV.3 Claudio Giunta and the so-called “funzione destinatario” 96 IV.4 Cavalcanti and the Collapsing of the Love Discourse 98 IV.5 Dante, the Vita Nuova, and the Definition of an Audience 106 IV.6 Petrarch’s Rerum vulgarium fragmenta 111 VI.7 Cavalcanti’s Circular Apostrophes 115 Conclusion 117 Chapter V: Voices of the Io 119 V.1 Amore 124 V.2 The Bystanders 132 V.3 The Tools of Writing 136 Conclusion 141 Conclusion 143 Bibliography 149 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am very grateful to the Keith Sykes Fund for the generous funding of this research, and to Selwyn college for hosting my studentship and for being such a welcoming intellectual home ever since I first arrived in Cambridge. I would like to thank the Italian Department at the University of Cambridge for providing such a vibrant, enriching, and supportive community in which to work. I also thank the Department of Romance Languages and Literature at the University of Notre Dame, where I spent three months of intense and joyful writing as a visiting student. For illuminating and inspiring discussions about Guido, I offer my deepest thanks to Zyg Barański, Marco Berisso, Paolo Borsa, Theodore J. Cachey, Robin Kirkpatrick, Giuseppe Ledda, Ryan Pepin, Helena Phillips-Robins, and Kath Powlesland. I wish to thank my supervisor, Heather Webb, who has provided constant encouragement, enthusiasm, and intellectual generosity. I dedicate this thesis to my mother and my father. VII INTRODUCTION INTRODUCTION This thesis describes how lyric subjectivity is articulated in Guido Cavalcanti’s Rime,1 exploring, in the first instance, how the first-person position is staged in the love lyrics of the Cavalcantian corpus. In introducing Alle origini dell’io lirico, a collection of essays published to celebrate Cavalcanti on the seventh centenary of his death, Roberto Antonelli emphasises that Cavalcanti ‘va [..] ricordato, poiché è con lui che inizia la lirica moderna in senso stretto, in quanto indagine poetica, autocosciente, dell’homo interior’.2 The collection, inaugurating a series of volumes linked by the common theme of the lyric ‘I’, aims to investigate and discuss the origins of modern lyric subjectivity by focussing on Cavalcanti’s poetry.3 This short quotation, by bringing into focus Cavalcanti’s importance for the lyric canon, urges us to further reflect upon the Rime, and to explore the reasons behind their enduring legacy.4 My investigation stems from the intention to contribute to this ongoing research. While there is an established narrative concerning Cavalcanti’s importance to the canon, which anoints the Rime as ‘uno snodo essenziale della tradizione lirica fino e oltre Petrarca’,5 Cavalcanti scholarship still lacks a comprehensive enquiry into Cavalcantian subjectivity which could contribute to our current understanding of the poet’s significance. As I will discuss, important studies have been produced on Cavalcanti’s sources, on intertextual relationships between Cavalcanti and the lyric tradition, and on issues of style and language, but very few contributions have directly addressed the issue of subjectivity in the Rime.6 These more recent studies have generally discussed subjectivity as related to some thematic choices characterising Cavalcanti’s fictionalisation of the traditional love dynamics 1 All quotations from and references to Cavalcanti’s corpus are taken from Guido Cavalcanti, Rime, ed. by Roberto Rea and Giorgio Inglese (Rome: Carocci, 2011). 2 Roberto Antonelli, ‘Cavalcanti o dell’interiorità’, in Alle origini dell’Io lirico. Cavalcanti o dell’interiorità, ed. by Roberto Antonelli (Rome: Viella, 2001), pp. 1-22 (p. 3). This critical interpretation of Guido’s poetry is accepted in Cavalcanti scholarship, as Roberto Rea’s ‘Introduction’ to the latest edition of the Rime testifies. Rea follows on from Antonelli’s pivotal observations when holding that ‘pochi poeti hanno rivoluzionato la storia della nostra tradizione come Guido Cavalcanti’ (Rea, ‘Introduzione’, in Cavalcanti, Rime, 2011, pp. 13-32 (p. 13)). The scholar talks about Cavalcanti’s poetry in terms of an outright breach with the Courtly tradition pursued by means of an internalisation of the lyric discourse. 3 Antonelli, ‘Premessa’, in Alle origini dell’io lirico, ed. by Antonelli, pp. V-VI (p. VI). 4 Ivi. 5 Antonelli, ‘Premessa’, in Roberto Rea, Cavalcanti poeta. Uno studio sul lessico lirico (Rome: Edizioni Nuova Cultura, 2008), pp. 11-12 (p. 11). 6 These sources will be presented and examined in the thesis. As I will also discuss it is Antonelli who first addresses directly the issue of subjectivity in Cavalcanti’s poetry – even if important remarks on this issue had already been made in previous works by other scholars. IX INTRODUCTION and to the poet’s consequent use of an innovative vocabulary to represent the Io and his7 condition.8 These fundamental studies do not entirely answer a central question I aim to address: how is subjectivity encoded and verbalised in the Rime? My object in this thesis is to tackle this critical vacuum by identifying and examining the main linguistic and rhetorical strategies that contribute to characterising the Cavalcantian model(s) of subjectivity. My methodology combines a more traditional approach with categories borrowed from Narratology and Linguistics, which I propose offer us new tools to consider the issue of subjectivity in the Rime, inviting fresh perspectives on the centrally important question I seek to engage with. To discuss subjectivity in the Rime first implies acknowledging central elements related to the poetry of Cavalcanti, such as its material transmission, reception, and characterising features. For this reason, in this Introduction I will expound some fundamental, interconnected aspects contributing to the canonisation of Cavalcanti’s poetry whose discussion constitutes an essential premise to the analyses of the following Chapters. I will retrace some of the essential episodes of Cavalcanti’s reception. As directly related to this aspect, I will touch upon issues of material culture and the Rime’s manuscript tradition. Before providing a summary of each Chapter’s content, I will discuss Cavalcanti’s representation of the phenomenology of love as expressed in his Rime. This exposition will be contextualised within the spread of medical and scientific treatises in the Western world and their internalisation in the production of love lyric, with specific attention to the reuse of these sources in the Italian love lyric.