Martin McLaughlin, Letizia Panizza, and Peter Hainsworth (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780197264133
- eISBN:
- 9780191734649
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197264133.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
Petrarch was Italy's second most famous writer (after Dante), and indeed from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries he was much better known and more influential in English literature than Dante. ...
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Petrarch was Italy's second most famous writer (after Dante), and indeed from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries he was much better known and more influential in English literature than Dante. His Italian love lyrics constituted the major influence on European love poetry for at least two centuries from 1400 to 1600, and in Britain he was imitated by Chaucer, the Elizabethans, and other lyric poets up until the end of the eighteenth century. With Romanticism Dante ousted Petrarch from his pre-eminent position, but in our post-Romantic age, attention has now started to swing back to Petrarch. This volume is a survey of Petrarch's literary legacy in Britain. Starting with his own views of those whom he called the ‘barbari Britanni’, the volume then explores a number of key topics: Petrarch's analysis of the self; his dialogue with other classical and Italian authors; Petrarchism and anti-Petrarchism in Renaissance Italy; Petrarchism in England and Scotland; and Petrarch's modern legacy in both Italy and Britain. Many important texts and poets are considered, including Giordano Bruno, Leopardi, Foscolo, Ascham, Sidney, Spenser, and Walter Savage Landor.Less
Petrarch was Italy's second most famous writer (after Dante), and indeed from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries he was much better known and more influential in English literature than Dante. His Italian love lyrics constituted the major influence on European love poetry for at least two centuries from 1400 to 1600, and in Britain he was imitated by Chaucer, the Elizabethans, and other lyric poets up until the end of the eighteenth century. With Romanticism Dante ousted Petrarch from his pre-eminent position, but in our post-Romantic age, attention has now started to swing back to Petrarch. This volume is a survey of Petrarch's literary legacy in Britain. Starting with his own views of those whom he called the ‘barbari Britanni’, the volume then explores a number of key topics: Petrarch's analysis of the self; his dialogue with other classical and Italian authors; Petrarchism and anti-Petrarchism in Renaissance Italy; Petrarchism in England and Scotland; and Petrarch's modern legacy in both Italy and Britain. Many important texts and poets are considered, including Giordano Bruno, Leopardi, Foscolo, Ascham, Sidney, Spenser, and Walter Savage Landor.
Pamela Williams
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780197264133
- eISBN:
- 9780191734649
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197264133.003.0018
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
This chapter examines Giacomo Leopardi's own imitation of Petrarch. It describes Leopardi's major engagement with Petrarch including his commentary on the Canzoniere and explains the similarities and ...
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This chapter examines Giacomo Leopardi's own imitation of Petrarch. It describes Leopardi's major engagement with Petrarch including his commentary on the Canzoniere and explains the similarities and differences between his All sua donna and Petrarch's Chiare, fresche e dolci acque. It suggests that the most striking similarity between the two poets is that they both are concerned with illusions without self-delusion.Less
This chapter examines Giacomo Leopardi's own imitation of Petrarch. It describes Leopardi's major engagement with Petrarch including his commentary on the Canzoniere and explains the similarities and differences between his All sua donna and Petrarch's Chiare, fresche e dolci acque. It suggests that the most striking similarity between the two poets is that they both are concerned with illusions without self-delusion.
Francesca Southerden
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199698455
- eISBN:
- 9780191738258
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199698455.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
Landscapes of Desire in the Poetry of Vittorio Sereni is the first book-length study in English on Vittorio Sereni (1913-83), one of the major figures of Italian twentieth-century ...
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Landscapes of Desire in the Poetry of Vittorio Sereni is the first book-length study in English on Vittorio Sereni (1913-83), one of the major figures of Italian twentieth-century poetry. It argues that a key innovation of Sereni’s poetry is constituted in the way in which, from Frontiera [Frontier] (1941) to Stella variabile [Variable Star] (1981), he reworks the boundaries of poetic space to construct a lyric ‘I’ radically repositioned in the textual universe with respect to its predecessors: an ‘I’ that is decentred, in limine, and struggles to subordinate the world to its point of view. Through an interdisciplinary framework that bridges psychoanalytic, linguistic, and poetic theory, two main dimensions of Sereni’s work are revisited and reassessed. The first is the role of liminality, which is presented as a condition of writing and as the mark of a desiring subject whose most desired object is the complete poem or total identity that elude him; the second is Sereni’s relationship to the Italian poetic tradition, including Dante, Petrarch, Leopardi, and Montale, who mediate his contact with a textual beyond that slips further and further from view. The study maps, through close-reading, the poet’s evolving use of deictic reference (spatio-temporal coordinates, demonstratives, personal pronouns) and the progressive transformation of the poem into a place of frustrated desire that occludes fulfilment. It argues that Sereni’s particular brand of experimentalism develops from this point and that he represents a unique moment in the history of twentieth-century Italian poetry in the way in which he adapts pre-existing models of lyric discourse to new modes of expression.Less
Landscapes of Desire in the Poetry of Vittorio Sereni is the first book-length study in English on Vittorio Sereni (1913-83), one of the major figures of Italian twentieth-century poetry. It argues that a key innovation of Sereni’s poetry is constituted in the way in which, from Frontiera [Frontier] (1941) to Stella variabile [Variable Star] (1981), he reworks the boundaries of poetic space to construct a lyric ‘I’ radically repositioned in the textual universe with respect to its predecessors: an ‘I’ that is decentred, in limine, and struggles to subordinate the world to its point of view. Through an interdisciplinary framework that bridges psychoanalytic, linguistic, and poetic theory, two main dimensions of Sereni’s work are revisited and reassessed. The first is the role of liminality, which is presented as a condition of writing and as the mark of a desiring subject whose most desired object is the complete poem or total identity that elude him; the second is Sereni’s relationship to the Italian poetic tradition, including Dante, Petrarch, Leopardi, and Montale, who mediate his contact with a textual beyond that slips further and further from view. The study maps, through close-reading, the poet’s evolving use of deictic reference (spatio-temporal coordinates, demonstratives, personal pronouns) and the progressive transformation of the poem into a place of frustrated desire that occludes fulfilment. It argues that Sereni’s particular brand of experimentalism develops from this point and that he represents a unique moment in the history of twentieth-century Italian poetry in the way in which he adapts pre-existing models of lyric discourse to new modes of expression.
Francesca Southerden
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199698455
- eISBN:
- 9780191738258
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199698455.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
The chapter begins with a definition of deixis and its poetic uses, which are then developed with regard to Sereni through a comparative reading of poems from his first and third collections, ...
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The chapter begins with a definition of deixis and its poetic uses, which are then developed with regard to Sereni through a comparative reading of poems from his first and third collections, Frontiera [Frontier] and Gli strumenti umani [The Human Implements]. As Sereni’s dialogue with Giacomo Leopardi reveals, he recognizes the value of deixis as a poetic trope that ideally enables the poet to conjure presence out of absence and anchor the subject at the centre of its universe. However increasingly unable to achieve those ends himself, Sereni’s recurrent use of deictic reference—in the form of spatio-temporal coordinates, demonstratives, and personal pronouns—attests instead to his diminishing hold over the textual landscape, his growing struggle to appropriate it, and the dispossession of self and space that ensues.Less
The chapter begins with a definition of deixis and its poetic uses, which are then developed with regard to Sereni through a comparative reading of poems from his first and third collections, Frontiera [Frontier] and Gli strumenti umani [The Human Implements]. As Sereni’s dialogue with Giacomo Leopardi reveals, he recognizes the value of deixis as a poetic trope that ideally enables the poet to conjure presence out of absence and anchor the subject at the centre of its universe. However increasingly unable to achieve those ends himself, Sereni’s recurrent use of deictic reference—in the form of spatio-temporal coordinates, demonstratives, and personal pronouns—attests instead to his diminishing hold over the textual landscape, his growing struggle to appropriate it, and the dispossession of self and space that ensues.
Joseph Luzzi
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- October 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780300123555
- eISBN:
- 9780300151787
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300123555.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
This book explores Italian Romanticism and the modern myth of Italy. Ranging across European and international borders, the book examines the metaphors, facts, and fictions about Italy that were born ...
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This book explores Italian Romanticism and the modern myth of Italy. Ranging across European and international borders, the book examines the metaphors, facts, and fictions about Italy that were born in the Romantic age and continue to haunt the global literary imagination. The themes of the book include the emergence of Italy as the “world's university” (Goethe) and “mother of arts” (Byron), the influence of Dante's Commedia on Romantic autobiography, and the representation of the Italian body politic as a woman at home and abroad. The book also provides a critical reevaluation of the three crowns of Italian Romantic letters, Ugo Foscolo, Giacomo Leopardi, and Alessandro Manzoni—profoundly influential writers largely undiscovered in Anglo-American criticism. The book offers fresh insights into the influence of Italian literary, cultural, and intellectual traditions on the foreign imagination from the Romantic age to the present.Less
This book explores Italian Romanticism and the modern myth of Italy. Ranging across European and international borders, the book examines the metaphors, facts, and fictions about Italy that were born in the Romantic age and continue to haunt the global literary imagination. The themes of the book include the emergence of Italy as the “world's university” (Goethe) and “mother of arts” (Byron), the influence of Dante's Commedia on Romantic autobiography, and the representation of the Italian body politic as a woman at home and abroad. The book also provides a critical reevaluation of the three crowns of Italian Romantic letters, Ugo Foscolo, Giacomo Leopardi, and Alessandro Manzoni—profoundly influential writers largely undiscovered in Anglo-American criticism. The book offers fresh insights into the influence of Italian literary, cultural, and intellectual traditions on the foreign imagination from the Romantic age to the present.
Giampiero Scafoglio
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- November 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780198810810
- eISBN:
- 9780191847950
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198810810.003.0021
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval, Poetry and Poets: Classical, Early, and Medieval
This chapter’s exploration of Giacomo Leopardi’s translation of the Aeneid tackles one of the most debated dilemmas in translation practice: whether or not one has to be a poet in order to translate ...
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This chapter’s exploration of Giacomo Leopardi’s translation of the Aeneid tackles one of the most debated dilemmas in translation practice: whether or not one has to be a poet in order to translate poetry. Having undertaken the daunting task of translating the Aeneid, Leopardi shows himself to be a good philologist and, at the same time, also comes into his own poetic vocation as his translation progresses. The result of his translation is an impressive achievement, Scafoglio argues, a work that combines literary faithfulness to the original with the rendering of the expressive musicality and elusive fascination of Virgilian verse in Italian.Less
This chapter’s exploration of Giacomo Leopardi’s translation of the Aeneid tackles one of the most debated dilemmas in translation practice: whether or not one has to be a poet in order to translate poetry. Having undertaken the daunting task of translating the Aeneid, Leopardi shows himself to be a good philologist and, at the same time, also comes into his own poetic vocation as his translation progresses. The result of his translation is an impressive achievement, Scafoglio argues, a work that combines literary faithfulness to the original with the rendering of the expressive musicality and elusive fascination of Virgilian verse in Italian.
Vilma De Gasperin
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199673810
- eISBN:
- 9780191751998
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199673810.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
This chapter explores Ortese’s early texts, which reveal Ortese’s writing originating from loss, such as autobiographical bereavement, separation, and melancholy. The elegy ‘Manuele’ (1933) and the ...
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This chapter explores Ortese’s early texts, which reveal Ortese’s writing originating from loss, such as autobiographical bereavement, separation, and melancholy. The elegy ‘Manuele’ (1933) and the short stories ‘Pellerossa’ and ‘Il capitano’ (from Angelici dolori, 1937) are autobiographical texts centred around the brother figura, as an emblem of a deep-rooted familial bond, which is severed in conjunction with the end of childhood and youth. ‘La cura’ (1942) broadens the spectrum of the short-story genre in its depiction of melancholy within a tale on love and abandonment. As well as presenting the early shaping of central themes and recurring topoi, the chapter foregrounds Ortese’s quotations from and allusions to Dante, Petrarch, Leopardi, Pascoli, D’Annunzio, Heinrich Heine, and draws parallels with Lamarque and Svevo. The analysis engages with cultural, anthropological, and psychoanalytical studies of mourning and melancholy (Freud, Kristeva, Klein, De Martino, Borgna)Less
This chapter explores Ortese’s early texts, which reveal Ortese’s writing originating from loss, such as autobiographical bereavement, separation, and melancholy. The elegy ‘Manuele’ (1933) and the short stories ‘Pellerossa’ and ‘Il capitano’ (from Angelici dolori, 1937) are autobiographical texts centred around the brother figura, as an emblem of a deep-rooted familial bond, which is severed in conjunction with the end of childhood and youth. ‘La cura’ (1942) broadens the spectrum of the short-story genre in its depiction of melancholy within a tale on love and abandonment. As well as presenting the early shaping of central themes and recurring topoi, the chapter foregrounds Ortese’s quotations from and allusions to Dante, Petrarch, Leopardi, Pascoli, D’Annunzio, Heinrich Heine, and draws parallels with Lamarque and Svevo. The analysis engages with cultural, anthropological, and psychoanalytical studies of mourning and melancholy (Freud, Kristeva, Klein, De Martino, Borgna)
Vilma De Gasperin
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199673810
- eISBN:
- 9780191751998
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199673810.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
Drawing on theories of autobiography, this chapter begins by investigating Ortese’s manipulation of the genre in her major novel Il porto di Toledo (1975), which revisits and incorporates Ortese’s ...
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Drawing on theories of autobiography, this chapter begins by investigating Ortese’s manipulation of the genre in her major novel Il porto di Toledo (1975), which revisits and incorporates Ortese’s early poems and stories and the author’s growing up in the transfigured town of Naples–Toledo. It particularly focuses on how the themes of bereavement, youth, love, war, and writing are shaped in her Bildungsroman through a complex and variegated intertextual dialogue with quotations from and allusions to authors from the Italian and European tradition, particularly Leopardi, Valéry, Villalón, Dumas, Petrarch, Conrad, and paintings by El Greco. First, the analysis focuses on the novel’s structure, linguistic practice, and hispanization. Then it explores the debt to Leopardi in Ortese’s shaping of the themes of loss of youth, transience and melancholy, identity, mourning, and the initiation to writing as a response to lossLess
Drawing on theories of autobiography, this chapter begins by investigating Ortese’s manipulation of the genre in her major novel Il porto di Toledo (1975), which revisits and incorporates Ortese’s early poems and stories and the author’s growing up in the transfigured town of Naples–Toledo. It particularly focuses on how the themes of bereavement, youth, love, war, and writing are shaped in her Bildungsroman through a complex and variegated intertextual dialogue with quotations from and allusions to authors from the Italian and European tradition, particularly Leopardi, Valéry, Villalón, Dumas, Petrarch, Conrad, and paintings by El Greco. First, the analysis focuses on the novel’s structure, linguistic practice, and hispanization. Then it explores the debt to Leopardi in Ortese’s shaping of the themes of loss of youth, transience and melancholy, identity, mourning, and the initiation to writing as a response to loss
Vilma De Gasperin
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199673810
- eISBN:
- 9780191751998
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199673810.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
This chapter explores ‘Il Monaciello di Napoli’ (1940), ‘Folletto a Genova’ (1984) and Il cardillo addolorato (1993), texts centred around an elf character, sharing many features with the fairy-tale ...
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This chapter explores ‘Il Monaciello di Napoli’ (1940), ‘Folletto a Genova’ (1984) and Il cardillo addolorato (1993), texts centred around an elf character, sharing many features with the fairy-tale genre. After discussing Ortese’s adaptation of the fairy-tale genre, it assesses her debt to traditional European and Italian folklore and literature, and explores the nature of storytelling, the grandmother figure, fantasy elements, themes of loss, childhood, modernity, guilt, suffering, and atonement, centred around the elf as a privileged emblem for the representation of the vulnerable and suffering Other. Intertextual analysis shows Ortese’s debt to Leopardi’s Canti in the construction of the theme of passing youth, to Collodi’s Pinocchio, and to Provençal poetry, while Il cardillo addolorato broadens the significance of the elf as representing underprivileged beings suffering marginalization from society and history, whose rights and existence are crushed by modernityLess
This chapter explores ‘Il Monaciello di Napoli’ (1940), ‘Folletto a Genova’ (1984) and Il cardillo addolorato (1993), texts centred around an elf character, sharing many features with the fairy-tale genre. After discussing Ortese’s adaptation of the fairy-tale genre, it assesses her debt to traditional European and Italian folklore and literature, and explores the nature of storytelling, the grandmother figure, fantasy elements, themes of loss, childhood, modernity, guilt, suffering, and atonement, centred around the elf as a privileged emblem for the representation of the vulnerable and suffering Other. Intertextual analysis shows Ortese’s debt to Leopardi’s Canti in the construction of the theme of passing youth, to Collodi’s Pinocchio, and to Provençal poetry, while Il cardillo addolorato broadens the significance of the elf as representing underprivileged beings suffering marginalization from society and history, whose rights and existence are crushed by modernity
Harald Hendrix
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- October 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780198826477
- eISBN:
- 9780191865442
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198826477.003.0015
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Poetry and Poets: Classical, Early, and Medieval, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
This chapter focuses on the ‘rediscovery’ of Virgil’s tomb in the Renaissance, exploring its position in the cultures of scholarship, travel, and leisure. Clusters of poets’ graves sprang up around ...
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This chapter focuses on the ‘rediscovery’ of Virgil’s tomb in the Renaissance, exploring its position in the cultures of scholarship, travel, and leisure. Clusters of poets’ graves sprang up around the so-called ‘tomb of Virgil’ in Piedigrotta near Naples, re-establishing it as a site of literary succession and inspiration; the tomb played a central role in the construction of Neapolitan urban identity and was a popular site for early modern travel and leisure, a role it still retains today. Generations of visitors to the tomb have felt a strong personal connection to the poet, a connection they have chosen to mark by leaving graffiti or notes at the tomb, by taking away laurel leaves, and by reciting and producing poetry at the site.Less
This chapter focuses on the ‘rediscovery’ of Virgil’s tomb in the Renaissance, exploring its position in the cultures of scholarship, travel, and leisure. Clusters of poets’ graves sprang up around the so-called ‘tomb of Virgil’ in Piedigrotta near Naples, re-establishing it as a site of literary succession and inspiration; the tomb played a central role in the construction of Neapolitan urban identity and was a popular site for early modern travel and leisure, a role it still retains today. Generations of visitors to the tomb have felt a strong personal connection to the poet, a connection they have chosen to mark by leaving graffiti or notes at the tomb, by taking away laurel leaves, and by reciting and producing poetry at the site.
Walter Cohen
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- March 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780198732679
- eISBN:
- 9780191796951
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198732679.003.0012
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
Unconstrained by the inhibiting logic of realist fiction, nineteenth-century poetry—and especially Romantic poetry—routinely concerns itself with distant cultures and questions of empire. In lyric ...
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Unconstrained by the inhibiting logic of realist fiction, nineteenth-century poetry—and especially Romantic poetry—routinely concerns itself with distant cultures and questions of empire. In lyric poetry, this predilection reverses the classical separation of the form from public affairs. Though the connection between literature and empire is not surprisingly strongest in England and France, it is a continent-wide phenomenon that assumes distinctive guises outside the two great metropolitan powers. One is the experience of victimization—oppression by another European power. The other is a tendency toward abstraction: if one’s country lacks colonial possessions, the turn to non-European civilization aids in reflection on apparently unrelated issues. These concerns are evident across Europe but especially in the poetry of Pushkin, Mickiewicz, and Leopardi.Less
Unconstrained by the inhibiting logic of realist fiction, nineteenth-century poetry—and especially Romantic poetry—routinely concerns itself with distant cultures and questions of empire. In lyric poetry, this predilection reverses the classical separation of the form from public affairs. Though the connection between literature and empire is not surprisingly strongest in England and France, it is a continent-wide phenomenon that assumes distinctive guises outside the two great metropolitan powers. One is the experience of victimization—oppression by another European power. The other is a tendency toward abstraction: if one’s country lacks colonial possessions, the turn to non-European civilization aids in reflection on apparently unrelated issues. These concerns are evident across Europe but especially in the poetry of Pushkin, Mickiewicz, and Leopardi.
