Notes
NOTES TO INTRODUCTION
MUSINGS AGAINST THE GRAIN: MUSINGS OF AN ITALIANIST,
FROM THE ASTRAL TO THE ARTISANAL
1. Danteâs Poets: Textuality and Truth in the Comedy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984); trans. into Italian by Paolo Barlera, Il miglior fabbro: Dante e i poeti della Commedia (Torino: Bollati Boringhieri, 1993). The Undivine Comedy: Detheologizing Dante (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), trans. into Italian by Roberta Antognini, La Commedia senza Dio: Dante e la creazione di una realtĂ virtuale (Milano: Feltrinelli, 2003).
2. The Commedia is cited throughout this volume in the edition of Giorgio Petrocchi, âLa Commediaâ secondo lâantica vulgata, 4 vols. (Milano: Mondadori, 1966â67). Unless otherwise noted, translations are my own.
3. Dante accomplishes the insertion of the name âMalebolgeâ in a fashion that is if anything even more narratologically manipulative, since he implies the speech acts of the denizens of hell. âLuogo Ăš in inferno detto Malebolgeâ (There is a place in hell called Malebolge [Inf. 18.1]) leaves unanswered (and usually unasked) the question âby whom, and in what conversations, is this place âdetto Malebolge?ââ
4. GiosuĂš Carducci and Severino Ferrari, eds., Le Rime (1899; rpt. Firenze: Sansoni, 1957), xxiii.
5. Il Gattopardo (Milano: Feltrinelli, 1980) 29; translation mine.
6. See the online preface to the Italian translation of The Undivine Comedy at the Feltrinelli Web site, www.feltrinelli.it/SchedaTesti?id_testo=1198&id_speclibro=1013.
7. Italo Calvino, Lezioni americane: Sei proposte per il prossimo millennio (Milano: Garzanti, 1988) chapter 1, âLeggerezzaâ: âSe volessi scegliere un simbolo augurale per lâaffacciarsi al nuovo millennio, sceglierei questo: lâagile salto improwiso del poeta-filosofo che si solleva sulla pesantezza del mondoâ (If I wanted to choose an inaugural symbol for the arrival of the next millennium, I would choose this: the agile sudden leap of the poet-philosopher who lifts himself above the heaviness of the world [13; trans. mine]). Calvino is somewhat reluctantâthe fault I believe of the reception history I have been discussingâto allow Dante his share of leggerezza, acknowledging a bit defensively that âquando Dante vuole esprimere leggerezza, anche nella Divina Commedia, nessuno sa farlo meglio di luiâ (when Dante wants to express lightness, even in the Divine Comedy, no one can do it better than he [16]).
8. Enciclopedia Cattolica, vol. 6 (Firenze: Sansoni, 1951): âQuestâinterna dilaniante contraddizione costituisce lâessenza dellâinferno e provoca nel dannato il frenetico moto della disperazione, che Dante ha potentemente sceneggiato nelle terzine, ove descrive il rumoreggiare incomposto della âperduta genteâ (Inf. 3.22â30)â (This lacerating internal contradiction constitutes the essence of hell and provokes in the damned soul a frenetic movement of desperation, which Dante has powerfully dramatized in the tercets where he describes the meaningless clamor of the âlost peopleââ [1946; trans. mine]).
9. The Papal Encyclicals, 1903â1939, trans. Claudia Carlen Ihm (Raleigh: Edwards, 1981), 214, 216.
10. My interest in Danteâs lyrics goes back to Danteâs Poets (see chapter 1). Three of the cappelli introduttivi for my commentary appear in the new journal Dante: Rivista internazionale di studi danteschi 1 (2004): 21-38, as âSaggio di un nuovo commento alle Rime di Dante. 1. La dispietata mente che pur mira: lâio al crocevia di memoria e disio; 2. Sonar bracchetti e cacciatori aizzare: lâio diviso tra mondo maschile e mondo femminile; 3. Guido, iâvorrei che tu e Lippo ed io: lâio e lâincanto della non-differenza.â
11. Sylvia Tomasch, âJudecca, Danteâs Satan, and the Dis-placed Jew,â in Text and Territory: Geographical Imagination in the European Middle Ages, ed. Sylvia Tomasch and Sealy Gilles (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998), 247â67.
12. Another interesting use of my work in this context is Kathleen Biddickâs âComing Out of Exile: Dante on the Orient(alism) Express,â American Historical Review 105.4 (2000): 1234â49.
13. See Caroline Walker Bynum, Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Body in Medieval Religion (New York: Zone Books, 1991), and The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200â1336 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995). For a strong position against dualism within Dante studies, see Christian Moeus, The Metaphysics of Danteâs âComedyâ (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005).
14. For a discussion of these philosophers in the context of time and narrative, see chapter 8 of The Undivine Comedy.
15. Two forthcoming essays are part of this ongoing book project, Petrarch, Metaphysical Poet. One is an overview, âRerum vulgarium fragmenta: The Self in the Labyrinth of Timeâ in The Panoptical Petrarch, ed. Victoria Kirkham and Armando Maggi (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, forthcoming); the other is a âmetaphysicalâ reading of the first twenty-one poems of the collection, âMetaphysical Markers at the Beginning of the Rerum vulgarium fragmenta,â in Petrarch and Dante, ed. Zygmunt BaraĆski and Theodore Cachey (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, forthcoming).
16. The work on Danteâs tenzone with Forese Donati by Susan Noakes is an important example of scholarship moving in this direction; see her âVirility, Nobility, and Banking: The Crossing of Discourses in the Tenzone with Forese,â in Dante for the New Millennium, ed. Teodolinda Barolini and H. Wayne Storey (New York: Fordham University Press, 2003), 241â258.
17. Giovanni di Paoloâs 61 illustrations to the Paradiso are in the British Libraryâs Yates Thompson codex, created around 1445 for the library of the king of Naples; the illustration to Paradiso 33 is British Library Yates Thompson 36, folio 190. Giovanni di Paoloâs extraordinary illustrations may be easily viewed in John Pope-Hennessy, Paradiso: The Illuminations to Danteâs âDivine Comedyâ by Giovanni di Paolo (New York: Random House, 1993).
NOTES TO CHAPTER 1
DANTE AND THE LYRIC PAST
This essay originally appeared in The Cambridge Companion to Dante, ed. Rachel Jacoff (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 14â33.
1. Throughout this volume thirteenth-century Italian lyric poets are cited from the edition of Gianfranco Contini, Poeti del Duecento, 2 vols. (Milano-Napoli: Ricciardi, 1960) with three exceptions. Guittone dâArezzo is cited from both Poeti del Duecento (Ora parrĂ ; Gente noiosa; Ahi lasso, che li boni e li malvagi) and from Le Rime di Guittone dâArezzo, ed. Francesco Egidi (Bari: Laterza, 1940). For Guido Cavalcanti, I have used the edition of Domenico De Robertis, Guido Cavalcanti, Rime, con le rime di Iacopo Cavalcanti (Torino: Einaudi, 1986). For editions of Danteâs lyrics, see note 5, below. Translations are my own unless otherwise noted.
2. Christopher Kleinhenz provides a thorough review of the cultivators of the early sonnet in The Early Italian Sonnet: The First Century (1220â1321) (Lecce: Milella, 1986).
3. The Vita nuova is cited from the edition of Domenico De Robertis (Milano-Napoli: Ricciardi, 1980) throughout this volume. I use the traditional Vita nuova, in Italian, because I have not been convinced by the arguments put forward by Guglielmo Gorni for changing to Vita Nova, in Latin; see Vita Nova, ed. Guglielmo Gorni (Torino: Einaudi, 1996). In his edition Guglielmo Gorni also makes new chapter divisions; in current work, such as my Rizzoli commentary to Danteâs lyrics, I use both the traditional (Barbian) chapter divisions and Gorniâs chapter divisions in referring to the Vita nuova. I have not added the Gorni chapter divisions to these essays, written before Gorniâs edition came out.
4. For the âauthorized view of Danteâs lyric pastâ as recounted in the Vita nuova and the Commedia, and in general for the Commediaâs handling of the vernacular tradition, see Danteâs Poets, chapters 1 and 2, of which I give a condensed version here.
5. The twentieth century produced three great editions of Danteâs lyrics, each magisterial in its own way. The fruits of Michele Barbiâs long philological and historical labors are to be found in two volumes published after his death: Michele Barbi and Francesco Maggini, eds., Rime della âVita Nuovaâ e della giovinezza (Firenze: Le Monnier, 1956); Michele Barbi and Vincenzo Pernicone, eds., Rime della maturitĂ e dellâesilio (Firenze: Le Monnier, 1969). Gianfranco Continiâs Rime (1946; 2d ed., Torino: Einaudi, 1965) remains unsurpassed for the pithiness and elegance of its formulations. (The same can be said for Continiâs introductions to the various poets represented in his anthology, Poeti del Duecento, cited above.) Most useful for its comprehensiveness and for the clarity of the portrait that emerges of the early Italian lyric schools is the edition of Kenelm Foster and Patrick Boyde, Danteâs Lyric Poetry, 2 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967). This editorial enterprise culminated with the publication in 2002 of Domenico De Robertisâs monumental five-volume edition of Dante lyrics. For a full description and critique of De Robertisâs edition, as well as a comparative analysis of all these editions, their choices, and the hermeneutical and cultural implications thereof, see the essay âEditing Danteâs Lyrics and Italian Cultural Historyâ in this volume.
Citations of the Rime are from Barbi-Maggini and Barbi-Pernicone throughout this volume, except for âEditing Danteâs Lyrics and Italian Cultural History,â âSotto benda: Gender in the Lyrics of Dante and Guittone dâArezzo,â and âNotes toward a Gendered History of Italian Literature,â which follow De Robertis. References to Contini, Rime, and to Foster-Boyde, Danteâs Lyric Poetry, are to the editions cited above.
6. The transition from contraction to expansion is well documented by Patrick Boyde, Danteâs Style in His Lyric Poetry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971).
7. On the rime petrose, in themselves and in relation to the Commedia, see Robert M. Durling and Ronald L. Martinez, Time and the Crystal: Studies in Danteâs âRime Petroseâ (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990).
8. Fabian Alfie puts to rest the question of the attribution in âFor Want of a Nail: The Guerri-Lanza-Cursietti Argument regarding the Tenzone,â Dante Studies 116 (1998): 141â59. For an important new reading of the tenzone, see Susan Noakes, âVirility, Nobility, and Banking: The Crossing of Discourses in the Tenzone with Forese,â in Dante for the New Millennium, ed. Teodolinda Barolini and H. Wayne Storey (New York: Fordham University Press, 2003), 241â58.
9. The translation is from Foster-Boyde, Danteâs Lyric Poetry, 1:153.
10. See ibid., 2:305.
NOTES TO CHAPTER 2
GUITTONEâS ORA PARRĂ, DANTEâS DOGLIA MI RECA, AND THE
COMMEDIAâS ANATOMY OF DESIRE
This essay originally appeared in Seminario Dantesco Internazionale: International Dante Seminar 1, ed. Zygmunt BaraĆski (Firenze: Le Lettere, 1997), 3â23.
1. The references to Guittoneâs poems in this essay follow the numbering of the edition of Francesco Egidi, Le Rime di Guittone dâArezzo (Bari: Laterza, 1940), although Ora parrĂ is cited from Contini, Poeti del Duecento.
2. Note Guittoneâs fondness...