Dantes Comedy And The Ethics Of Invective In Medieval Italy

Download or read book Dante's Comedy and the Ethics of Invective in Medieval Italy written by Nicolino Applauso and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2019-11-13 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dante's Comedy and the Ethics of Invective in Medieval Italy proposes a new approach to invective and comic poetry in Italy during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and opens the way for an innovative understanding of Dante’s masterpiece. The Middle Ages in Italy offer a wealth of vernacular poetic invectives—polemical verses aimed at blaming specific wrongdoings of an individual, group, city or institution— that are both understudied and rarely juxtaposed. No study has yet provided a scholarly examination of the connection between this medieval invective tradition, and its elements of humor, derision, and reprehension in Dante’s Comedy. This book argues that these comic texts are rooted in and actively engaged with the social, political, and religious conflicts of their time. Political invective has a dynamic ethical orientation that is mediated by a humor that disarms excessive hostility against its individual targets, providing an opening for dialogue. While exploring medieval comic poems by Rustico Filippi (from Florence), Cecco Angiolieri (from Siena), and Folgore da San Gimignano, this study unveils new biographical data about these poets retrieved from Italian state archives (most of these data are published here in English for the very first time), and ultimately shows what the medieval invective tradition can add to our understanding of Dante’s Comedy.

Download or read book Dante Satiro written by Fabian Alfie and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2020-05-19 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of essays is the first comprehensive study on Dante and satire within his entire corpus that has been published. Its title evokes the moment when Virgil leads Dante through Limbo, the uppermost portion of Hell. There, they are joined by four classical poets, and Virgil describes one of them as “Horace the satirist” (“Orazio satiro,” 4:89). By applying the expression to Dante himself, this volume seeks to explore the satirical elements in his works. Although Dante is not typically described as a satirist, anyone familiar with his works will recognize the strong satirical element in his many writings. Ultimately, this study shows that Dante engages in satire in order to attain the primary literary tool at his disposal for his prophetic objectives: the castigation of vice.

Download or read book Tracing the Trails in the Medieval World written by Albrecht Classen and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-10-11 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Every human being knows that we are walking through life following trails, whether we are aware of them or not. Medieval poets, from the anonymous composer of Beowulf to Marie de France, Hartmann von Aue, Gottfried von Strassburg, and Guillaume de Lorris to Petrarch and Heinrich Kaufringer, predicated their works on the notion of the trail and elaborated on its epistemological function. We can grasp here an essential concept that determines much of medieval and early modern European literature and philosophy, addressing the direction which all protagonists pursue, as powerfully illustrated also by the anonymous poets of Herzog Ernst and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Dante’s Divina Commedia, in fact, proves to be one of the most explicit poetic manifestations of the fundamental idea of the trail, but we find strong parallels also in powerful contemporary works such as Guillaume de Deguileville’s Pèlerinage de la vie humaine and in many mystical tracts.

Download or read book Comic Invective in Ancient Greek and Roman Oratory written by Sophia Papaioannou and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2021-08-02 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume acknowledges the centrality of comic invective in a range of oratorical institutions (especially forensic and symbouleutic), and aspires to enhance the knowledge and understanding of how this technique is used in such con-texts of both Greek and Roman oratory. Despite the important scholarly work that has been done in discussing the patterns of using invective in Greek and Roman texts and contexts, there are still notable gaps in our knowledge of the issue. The introduction to, and the twelve chapters of, this volume address some understudied multi-genre and interdisciplinary topics: first, the ways in which comic invective in oratory draws on, or has implications for, comedy and other genres, or how these literary genres are influenced by oratorical theory and practice, and by contemporary socio-political circumstances, in articulating comic invective and targeting prominent individuals; second, how comic invective sustains relationships and promotes persuasion through unity and division; third, how it connects with sexuality, the human body and male/female physiology; fourth, what impact generic dichotomies, as, for example, public-private and defence-prosecution, may have upon using comic invective; and fifth, what the limitations in its use are, depending on the codes of honour and decency in ancient Greece and Rome.

Download or read book Rural Space in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Age written by Albrecht Classen and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2012-05-29 with total page 932 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Older research on the premodern world limited its focus on the Church, the court, and, more recently, on urban space. The present volume invites readers to consider the meaning of rural space, both in light of ecocritical readings and social-historical approaches. While previous scholars examined the figure of the peasant in the premodern world, the current volume combines a large number of specialized studies that investigate how the natural environment and the appearance of members of the rural population interacted with the world of the court and of the city. The experience in rural space was important already for writers and artists in the premodern era, as the large variety of scholarly approaches indicates. The present volume signals how much the surprisingly close interaction between members of the aristocratic and of the peasant class determined many literary and art-historical works. In a surprisingly large number of cases we can even discover elements of utopia hidden in rural space. We also observe how much the rural world was a significant element already in early-medieval mentality. Moreover, as many authors point out, the impact of natural forces on premodern society was tremendous, if not catastrophic.

Download or read book The Secret in Medieval Literature written by Albrecht Classen and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2022-11-15 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Secret in Medieval Literature explores the many secret agents, actions, creatures, and other beings influencing human existence. Medieval poets had a clear sense of the alternative dimension (the secret) and allowed it to enter quite frequently into their texts.

Download or read book The Poetry of the Medieval Troubadour, William IX of Aquitaine written by Fidel Fajardo-Acosta and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2023-08-15 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An edition and study of the poetry of the first of the medieval European troubadours, this book claims William’s songs are cornerstones of the modern western mind and culture, but also reveal the deep-seated problems and instability of structures built on a foundation of love and freedom of desires.