In this book, Teodolinda Barolini explores the sources of Italian literary culture in the figures of its lyric poets and its "three crowns": Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. Barolini views the origins of Italian literary culture through four prisms: the ideological/philosophical, the intertextual/multicultural, the structural/formal, and the social.
The essays in the first section treat the ideology of love and desire from the early lyric tradition to the Inferno and its antecedents in philosophy and theology. In the second, Barolini focuses on Dante as heir to both the Christian visionary and the classical pagan traditions (with emphasis on Vergil and Ovid). The essays in the third part analyze the narrative character of Dante's Vita nuova, Petrarch's lyric sequence, and Boccaccio's Decameron. Barolini also looks at the cultural implications of the editorial history of Dante's rime and at what sparso versus organico spells in the Italian imaginary. In the section on gender, she argues that the didactic texts intended for women's use and instruction, as explored by Guittone, Dante, and Boccaccio-but not by Petrarch-were more progressive than the courtly style for which the Italian tradition is celebrated.
Moving from the lyric origins of the Divine Comedy in "Dante and the Lyric Past" to Petrarch's regressive stance on gender in "Notes toward a Gendered History of Italian Literature"-and encompassing, among others, Giacomo da Lentini, Guido Cavalcanti, and Guittone d'Arezzo-these sixteen essays by one of our leading critics frame the literary culture of thirteenth-and fourteenth-century Italy in fresh, illuminating ways that will prove useful and instructive to students and scholars alike.

About the Author
Teodolinda Barolini, past President of the Dante Society of America, is Lorenzo Da Ponte Professor of Italian at Columbia University. She is the author of Dante's Poets: Textuality and Truth in the Comedy and The Undivine Comedy: Detheologizing Dante, and the co-editor, with H. Wayne Storey, of Dante for the New Millennium (Fordham).

Reviews
"A uniquely distinctive critical voice in medieval Italian literary studies: vigorous, sharply intelligent, combative, original, and most of all, honest." -- -Zygmunt Baranski Cambridge University "At every step, Barolini reinforces and expands our comprehension of Dante's genius, of his grasp of the past, and of his innovation. She offers measured, informed, and utterly compelling argument that is not controversial for the sake of controversy, but insightful, bold, and relevant. This volume is indispensable." -Medium Aevum "This is an Italianist at the top of her game, and it's an inspiring game to watch." -ENCOMIA: Bibliographical Bulletin of the International Courtly Literature Society "The essays are informed throughout not only by medievalist erudition but by a lively interest in methodological and theoretical issues, especially in the area of gender. This book's appearance is an important event for Italian and medieval studies. Highly Recommended." -Choice "Barolini collects her essays, which are more about what Dante does with material than where he found it." -Bibliotheque d'Humanisme et Renaissance "...These sixteen essays by one of our leading critics frame the literary culture of thirteenth-and fourteenth-century Italy in fresh, illuminating ways that will prove useful and instructive to students and scholars alike." -Italian Tribune "Traces the development of Italy's literary tradition in terms of its lyric poets and its 'three crowns': Dante, Petrach, and Boccaccio." -The Chronicle of Higher Education "A magisterial work, written by one of the foremost Italianists of North America, and one of the best volumes devoted to the birth and development of Italian literary culture on either side of the Atlantic." -- -Piero Boitani University of Rome "... Its publication is a notable and most welcome event in Italian studies." -Renaissance Quarterly



Book Information
ISBN 9780823227044
Author Teodolinda Barolini
Format Paperback
Page Count 496
Imprint Fordham University Press
Publisher Fordham University Press