Accounting for Dante

Justin Steinberg

Description

In Accounting for Dante, Justin Steinberg reexamines Dante's relation to his contemporary public, an audience that included those poets who responded to Dante's early work as well as the readers who first copied, preserved, and circulated his poetry. Based on original research of manuscripts and documents, Steinberg's study reveals in particular the importance of professional, urban classes—namely, merchants and notaries—as cultivators of early Italian poetry.

Although not officially trained as glossators or scribes, these newly educated readers were full participants in an emergent vernacular literature, demonstrating at times a marked degree of sophistication in their choices of which lyric poems to include in their personal anthologies. Adapting their methods of memorializing contracts and keeping accounts to the collecting of medieval Italian poetry, these urban readers and writers made copying Italian poetry a crucial aspect of how they understood and represented themselves as individuals and communities. Steinberg describes how notaries and merchants transcribed Dante's poetry in nontraditional formats, such as in the archival documents of the Memoriali bolognesi and the register-book Vaticano Latino 3793.

In bringing to light evidence of the urban reception of the early Italian lyric, Justin Steinberg restores the political, social, and historical contexts in which Dante would have understood the poetic debates of his day. He also examines how Dante continuously responded in his literary career—from the Vita Nuova, to the De Vulgari eloquentia, to the Commedia—to the interpretations and misinterpretations of his early lyrics by this municipal audience.

Sujets

• Literary Criticism
• Medieval

Informations

• Publié par: University of Notre Dame Press
• Date de parution: 05 janvier 2007
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780268182045
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 17 Mo

Extrait

A C C O U N T I N G D A N T E f o r

T H E W I L L I A M A N D K A T H E R I N E D E V E R S S E R I E S I N D A N T E S T U D I E S

Theodore J. Cachey, Jr., and Christian Moevs, editors Simone Marchesi, associate editor Ilaria Marchesi, assistant editor ——————        Experiencing the Afterlife: Soul and Body in Dante and Medieval Culture Manuele Gragnolati

       Understanding Dante John A. Scott

       Dante and the Grammar of the Nursing Body Gary P. Cestaro

       TheFioreand theDetto d’Amore:A Lateth-Century Italian Translation of the Roman de la Rose, attributable to Dante Translated, with introduction and notes, by Santa Casciani and Christopher Kleinhenz

       The Design in the Wax: The Structure of the Divine Comedy and Its Meaning Marc Cogan

       TheFiorein Context: Dante, France, Tuscany editedbyZygmuntG.Bara´nskiandPatrickBoyde

       Dante Now: Current Trends in Dante Studies edited by Theodore J. Cachey, Jr.

A C C O U N T I N G f o r D A N T E

Urban Readers and Writers in Late Medieval Italy

J U S T I N S T E I N B E R G

. University of Notre Dame Press Notre Dame, Indiana

University of Notre DamePress

Copyright ©by University of Notre Dame Notre Dame, Indiana undpress.nd.edu All Rights Reserved

Published in the United States of America

The publisher gratefully acknowledges the support of the Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Publication Award for a Manuscript in Italian Literary Studies ( Modern Language Association of America) and of the Division of Humanities of the University of Chicago in the publication of this volume.

Reproductions in any form of images obtained with permission from the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali of the Archivio di Stato, Bologna, the Archivio di Stato, Florence, the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Florence, and the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence, are forbidden.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Steinberg, Justin. Accounting for Dante : urban readers and writers in late medieval Italy / Justin Steinberg. p. cm. — ( The William and Katherine Devers series in Dante studies) Includes bibliographical references and index. -: ----(pbk. : alk. paper) -: ---(pbk. : alk. paper) . Dante Alighieri,‒— Influence.life —— Intellectual . Italy  ‒ . Italian literature — ToI. Title.— History and criticism. .  '.— dc  ISBN 9780268182045

∞The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources. This e-Book was converted from the original source file by a third-party vendor. Readers who notice any formatting, textual, or readability issues are encouraged to contact the publisher at [e-mail].

For my parents

Contents

About the William and Katherine Devers Series List of Illustrations Acknowledgments

Introduction

c h a p t e r o n e Dante’s First Editors: The Memoriali bolognesi and the Politics of Vernacular Transcription

c h a p t e r t w o “Apresso che questa canzone fue alquanto divulgata tra le genti”: Vaticanoand thedonneof “Donne ch’avete intelletto d’amore”

c h a p t e r t h r e e “A terrigenis mediocribus”: TheDe vulgari eloquentia and the Babel of Vaticano

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Contents

c h a p t e r f o u r Merchant Bookkeeping and Lyric Anthologizing: Codicological Aspects of Vaticano

c h a p t e r f i v e Bankers in Hell: The Poetry of Monte Andrea in Dante’sInfernobetween Historicism and Historicity

e p i l o g u e “Dante”:Purgatorio.the Female Voiceand the Question of

Notes Bibliography Index of Names and Notable Matters Index of Passages from Dante’s Works

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   

About the William and Katherine Devers Series in Dante Studies

The William and Katherine Devers Program in Dante Studies at the University of Notre Dame supports rare book acquisitions in the university’s John A. Zahm Dante collections, funds an annual visiting professorship in Dante studies, and supports electronic and print publication of scholarly research in the field. In col- laboration with the Medieval Institute at the university, the Devers program has initiated a series dedicated to the publication of the most significant current schol- arship in the field of Dante Studies. In keeping with the spirit that inspired the creation of the Devers program, the series takes Dante as a focal point that draws together the many disciplines and lines of inquiry that constitute a cultural tradition without fixed boundaries. Ac- cordingly, the series hopes to illuminate Dante’s position at the center of contem- porary critical debates in the humanities by reflecting both the highest quality of scholarly achievement and the greatest diversity of critical perspectives. The series publishes works on Dante from a wide variety of disciplinary view- points and in diverse scholarly genres, including critical studies, commentaries, editions, translations, and conference proceedings of exceptional importance. The series is supervised by an international advisory board composed of distinguished Dante scholars and is published regularly by the University of Notre Dame Press. The Dolphin and Anchor device that appears on publications of the Devers series was used by the great humanist, grammarian, editor, and typographer Aldus Manu- tius ( ‒), in whoseedition of Dante (second issue) and all subsequent editions it appeared. The device illustrates the ancient proverbFestina lente,“Hurry up slowly.”

Theodore J. Cachey, Jr., and Christian Moevs,editors Simone Marchesi,associate editor Ilaria Marchesi,assistant editor

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