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ITALIAN BOOKSHELF Edited by Dino S. Cervigni with the Collaboration of Paolo Cherchi, Gustavo Costa, Valeria Finucci, Albert N. Mancini, Massimo Maggiari, and John P. Welle. The Feminist Encyclopedia of Italian Literature. Ed. Rinaldina Russell. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood, 1997. Pp. 402. This volume is the first feminist encyclopedia of Italian literature. As the editor points out in the introductory essay, "it is not an encyclopedia of Italian women writers, although, of course many writers considered here are women; it is rather a companion volume for those who wish to investigate Italian literary culture and writings, penned by women and men, in a feminist perspective" (vii). In presenting a broad panorama of Italian literary and cultural scene throughout the ages, it is useful as a complement to another recent Greenwood publication, Italian Women Writers, a collection of fifty-one monographic chapters on the most important women writers from the fourteenth century to the present. The aim of the present volume is to provide a general audience in the United States with access to a feminist perspective of Italian literature, so far limited to a group of specialists, for the most part within the academic circles of Italian studies, history, and comparative literature. "Among the general college-educated readers, knowledge about feminist approaches to Italian writing, and even about the existence of Italian women writers, remains scanty," observes Russell (vii). Tracing the presence of women in Italian literature and culture poses a particularly difficult task since "with the exception of writing by religious women, few literary forms and examples of female expression remain other than those provided by canonical genres. No corpus of letters, diaries, or other types of literary outlet has been found and collected in Italy, besides those already known in literary circles" (viii). Russell believes that the reasons for that peculiar situation are to be found in Italian history. She draws a brief overview of Italian society with its rigid division due to widespread illiteracy into low and high (institutionalized) culture components. Women, she claims, "while not totally excluded from it, have been cramped by the very sponsorship they received" (viii). As an example, she discusses the sudden resurgence of literary women in sixteenth-century Italy and "the absorption of their literary talents to the demands of patriarchal middle-class society in the ages that followed" (ix). The relationship between women and writing is crucial to the understanding of the overall picture of the western cultural tradition, claims Russell, and the present volume hopes to illuminate that relationship. The alphabetically arranged entries encompass eight centuries of Italian literature. They cover a number of different categories selected according to the relevance of each category to Italian culture and feminist thought. The broadest category is devoted to writers and contains entries on authors, both male and female, canonical and marginal. In each case the focus falls on the ways in which their writing explores gender relations and constructs images of women. Each entry contains a brief biographical note, followed by a discussion of the writer’s works from a feminist perspective, and a short bibliography. In some entries the contributors map possible new approaches to a number of subjects as well as offer valuable suggestions for their future exploration. This is particularly interesting in the case of canonical authors or texts, because until recently they have rarely been considered from a feminist viewpoint. For example, in her entry on Dante, Regina F. Psaki points to recently opened venues in Dante’s criticism hoping that they will "yield up new perspectives on women as bearers and makers of meaning" (62). Other categories include historical periods and literary-cultural movements, both international, (for example, modernism/postmodernism), and specifically Italian, such as scapigliatura or verismo. These entries present the period’s or movement’s main characteristics and offer a brief discussion of the relationship between them and women’s writing. For instance, the entry on Fascism highlights the role of women during the Fascist period and the Resistance, and contrasts the importance of their contribution with the scarcity of scholarly work on women’s participation in both movements. Cross-references help the reader establish the link between Fascism and such related topics as futurism, motherhood, novel, romance, etc. Disciplines, schools of thought, and trends in criticism that influenced the feminist perspective are also given substantial attention. As the editor points out, some subjects "such as cicisbeismo, questione della lingua, and weak thought are considered here for the first time in relation to feminist positions" (ix). Literary and theatrical genres are analyzed from the viewpoint of women’s participation or exclusion. Some entries explore themes, ideas, social issues, and stereotypes which have shaped women’s lives, e.g. abortion, disease, female bonding, prostitution, hagiography, courtesan, nun, etc. These entries present the reader with an historical perspective, emphasizing the interplay of social and literary influences responsible for creating stereotypical images of women, as well as resistance to these images. In view of the particular impact of women’s publishing houses and cinema on the general public, the editor decided to include these categories as well. The volume is very well organized and allows an easy access to the needed information. All the entries are arranged alphabetically and follow an internal pattern: a general presentation of the subject, a critical discussion, and a selected bibliography set chronologically. Asterisks guide the readers to other related topics. The volume also contains an appendix where entries are listed by period and subject, a brief selected bibliography on women writers, an index, and a list of contributors. The Feminist Encyclopedia is an invaluable help for readers interested in exploring less-traveled roads of Italian literature. They will appreciate the wealth of information provided by each entry as well as possible suggestions for further research. The present volume is a very useful reference tool and a necessary acquisition by any library. Barbara Zaczek, Clemson University
Tables of Contents | Norms for Contributors | Upcoming Volumes | Subscription Information | Books Received for Review | Editorial Policy | The Editorial Board | Series Studi e Testi | Mail the Editor Italian Cultural Studies: An Introduction. Ed. David Forgacs and Robert Lumley. Oxford: UP, 1996. Pp. Xv + 368. Given the wide range of interests and theoretical approaches that Cultural Studies embraces, and the relatively short time it has been on the academic and scholarly scene, it is probably too early to offer a definition of this fast growing field which would be accurate enough to satisfy its practitioners on both sides of the Atlantic. Indeed, a great deal of space in the debate on Cultural Studies which has taken place over the last few years has been given over to the vexed question of what exactly this new field is. Still, despite the uncertainties which both surround and characterize Cultural Studies (to the delight of some of its practitioners), a few points at least seem fixed enough to warrant the status of founding principles: namely, a concern for and interest in a plurality of cultural practices and discourses; a concern for and interest in those subaltern discourses, practices and subjects which have been dispatched to the margins of the master narrative(s) of history; and a decidedly oppositional stance vis-a-vis established cultural practices and discourses and the modes of studying them. From this two further points can be noted: first, that Cultural Studies is thus far probably the academic world’s best and most concrete response to the crisis in values which has been the characteristic mark of the post-modern epoch; and second, that the implications which Cultural Studies has on the construction of curricula and canons, on the who, what and how of study, are enormous. Herein lies the importance of Italian Cultural Studies: An Introduction, a collection of eighteen essays edited by David Forgacs and Robert Lumley. Thus far Italian Cultural Studies has already produced a consistent and high-level body of research work, particularly studies published in Great Britain by the likes of Zygmunt Baranski and Stephen Gundle, among others. Yet, material for teaching undergraduate-level courses on Italian Cultural Studies has been almost non-existent. The greatest merit of Forgacs’s and Lumley’s book – the work of scholars who, along with Baranski and Gundle, have been at the forefront of British Italian Cultural Studies ( Forgacs, with his study of Italian Culture in the Industrial Era, and Lumley, with his recent anthology Italian Journalism) – is that it supplies for the first time a text with which to teach such courses. Aiming to "stimulate a critical reassessment of what ‘culture’ means in the Italian case and indicate new ways into the study of Italian culture and society" (1), the two editors present their readers with a good picture of what a course on twentieth-century Italy inspired by the principles of Cultural Studies might look like. Accordingly, attention is given not so much to manifestations of high culture as to popular culture (and here the chapter on football/soccer that the editors mysteriously were not able to include is sorely missed) and the post-war Americanization of Italian patterns of cultural consumption; not so much to culture conceived of as elite aesthetic experience as to culture as lived experience, understood anthropologically as a manifestation of "symbolic social forms" (1); not so much to conventional centers of power as to the South and to subordinated groups like women and immigrants; not so much to literature as a channel of communication as to the press and the mass-media industry. The text is divided into four parts: "Geographies," with essays by John Dickie, Michael Eve, Paola Filipucci, Gabriella Gribaudi, and Tullio De Mauro; "Identities," with essays by Simon Parker, Jeff Pratt, Luisa Passerini, and Vanessa Maher; "Media," with essays by Peppino Ortoleva, Lumley, Christopher Wagstaff, Elena Dagrada and Ann Hallmore Caesar; and "Culture and Society," with essays by Forgacs, Franco Bianchini, Massimo Torrigiani and Rinella Cere, Gundle and Marcella Filippa. Each section is accompanied by some very useful instances of Cultural Studies in action, the kind of work students approaching the field might themselves do: for example, brief analyses of the paninari, a scene or two from Ladri di biciclette, or the Lega Nord’s fantasy map of what a newly divided Italy might look like. Although the standard of these contributions is uniformly high, some, however, are more useful than others. The main limit to Passerini’s essay on "Gender Relations," Ortoleva’s on "A Geography of the Media since 1945," Dagrada’s on "Television and its Critics: A Parallel History," and Bianchini, Torrigiani and Cere’s rather drab essay on "Cultural Policy" is that they do little more than pass on fairly well-established facts about their respective areas. The text as a whole, of course, has the primary function of introducing the field, but the main drawback of the essays above is that, interesting and important as they are, they leave very little space for discussion. Perhaps such matters could have been dealt with in a more perfunctory manner in an enlarged introduction to the volume. As it is, these are essays from which largely one is invited to take notes. Most of the other essays fare better, the highlights of which are Dickie’s essay on identity formation, "Imagined Italies," which builds on the work of Benedict Anderson; the two essays on the South by Filipucci and Gribaudi; the essays on "Political Identities" by Parker, "Catholic Culture" by Pratt, and "Immigration and Social Identities" by Maher, all of which are extremely illuminating; and Forgacs’s excellent essay on "Cultural Consumption." Although the choice of what to include in such a collection was probably the editors’ most difficult decision, nevertheless the virtual absence from the collection of Antonio Gramsci, a seminal figure for Cultural Studies, whose theory of hegemony has been of great critical gain for the field, is surprising. Gramsci’s almost total absence, except for fleeting references in Filipucci’s essay in connection with folklore and Gribaudi’s on the Southern question, is a sign, however, of two further limits to the book: namely, a certain reluctance to address some of the theoretical questions that underpin Cultural Studies, and what seems to me its overly narrow concentration on post-war Italy. Even though it has been done before, it would have been a service to students and teachers alike to have a handy, concise account of Gramsci’s theory of hegemony, illustrated with his analysis of why the Risorgimento failed to be the revolution he believed, rightly or wrongly, it could have been. This could have been tied in with many of the themes the book addresses so effectively like the Southern question and the issue of national identity. Furthermore, students would also be exposed both to the founding narrative of post-Risorgimento Italian national identity and to the subaltern narratives which have sought to challenge it. On this point, Dickie’s otherwise marvelous piece on national identity, which limits itself to post-war Italy, is lacking. The decision to concentrate on the post-war period was probably dictated by reasons of space. This is, of course, understandable. It does mean, however, that the text is less useful in US-Italian curricula than it otherwise could have been. Given the differences in organization of undergraduate majors between Great Britain and the US, there are relatively few departments of Italian in the US which can allow themselves the luxury of offering a course limited to post-war Italy. For this reason, although it is undoubtedly a major asset in the promotion of Cultural Studies within the world of US-Italian Studies, and can be adopted as a course text book (as I have done), it does need to be supplemented with material from the pre 1945 period. My suspicion, however, is that this is a text which was not really intended to cater to the needs of US curricula. Reading Forgacs’s and Lumley’s introduction, one notices a polemic with the reluctance of Italian academic institutions to embrace Italian Cultural Studies. The reasons for this reluctance are many, go to the roots of Italian history and culture, and are examined in the introduction, albeit briefly. The impression one receives from the introduction is that the major function of this collection is to present a recalcitrant Italian academic world with examples of the best that the British and Italian practitioners of Cultural Studies can produce. Indeed, none of the contributors is either a US or US-based scholar. Nevertheless, Forgacs’s and Lumley’s book is a welcome first and we must hope that its arrival will give other publishing companies the courage to furnish Italian Cultural Studies with the kind of teaching materials it needs if the field is to progress beyond the sphere of research. David Ward, Wellesley College
Tables of Contents | Norms for Contributors | Upcoming Volumes | Subscription Information | Books Received for Review | Editorial Policy | The Editorial Board | Series Studi e Testi | Mail the Editor Paul Colilli. The Idea of a Living Spirit: Poetic Logic As a Contemporary Theory. Toronto Studies In Semiotics. Toronto: Toronto UP, 1997. Pp. 290. The Idea of a Living Spirit è un testo lucido e necessario, soprattutto per la chiarezza con cui discute alcune delle tematiche più presenti nella cultura filosofica e letteraria italiana. L’opera di Colilli è ancor più meritoria se si considera l’imbarazzante disinteresse di troppi italianisti al riguardo di ciò che viene genericamente definito come "teoria." Ci si puù solo augurare che il libro di Colilli, non scevro di una qualche incertezza strutturale e tematica, divenga un punto di riferimento per lo studio e l’insegnamento del rapporto tra filosofia e teoria letteraria nella cultura italiana. Nella prefazione Colilli si cura di spiegare come con "logica poetica", il vichiano convincimento dell’esistenza di un originario e mitico dire il reale attraverso la retorica poetica, egli intenda significare ed investigare quel ""linguaggio di mezzo" (middle speech), posizionato tra prosa e poesia, tra comprensione razionale ed intuizione spirituale (viii-xi). L’"idea" di uno "spirito vivente" si identifica quindi con l’ipotesi di un possibile darsi della "concretezza" di un’entità esistente, di ciò che Colilli anche chiama "la concreta spiritualità" dell’oggetto (xi). Colilli giustamente considera il Neoplatonismo ficiniano come il punto di origine di un tale discorso teorico. È appunto nel Rinascimento italiano che si ipotizza un’essenziale unione del tutto, di una "armonia" del mondo, nella quale percezione, ragione, e poetico dire si fondono come aspetti o passaggi di un unico sistema conoscitivo. Per sostenere il suo discorso Colilli si rifà a testi di Giorgio Agamben, Giordano Bruno, Vico, Paolo Valesio e Franco Rella, al cui pensiero, insieme a quello fondamentale di Pier Aldo Rovatti e Massimo Cacciari, avrebbero potuto essere dedicato un ben più ampio spazio. Il libro si apre e si conclude con un breve "Threshold" ed è ripartito in tre sezioni. Nella prima ("The Invention of Poetic Logic"), divisa in tre capitoli, Colilli pone in risalto la necessità di "ripensare la relazione tra ragione, espressione umana ed ecologie culturali" (29). L’atto di conoscenza, sottolinea Colilli, è essenzialmente un atto retorico, un processo tropologico che procede verso la fusione del dire mitico e di quello tecnico. È appunto questa rottura che, secondo Colilli, deve essere "riparata" attraverso un recupero del linguaggio tropologico. Nel primo capitolo ("New Life of the Poetological") Colilli menziona il suggestivo passo dallo Zibaldone in cui Leopardi parla di una "ultrafilosofia", che esamini ed esprima la complessità dell’esistere senza ricorrere né alla disperazione né ad un’ irrazionale speranza (17). Nella ricerca di un dire "poetologico" Colilli offre un affascinante esame del pensiero di Giorgio Agamben e del volume di Paolo Valesio Ascoltare il silenzio (48-72). Sia Agamben che Valesio pongono l’accento sul centrale ruolo della "Voce" e del silenzio all’interno di ogni forma retorica. Con "Voce" Agamben significa "una dimensione del negativo . . . poiché [Voce] non è più voce ma non è ancora significato." "Voce", spiega Colilli, non è ancora significato perché "non ha ancora verificato la sua ipotesi" (58). Nella seconda sezione ("Quotidie: The Signs of Lived Experience") il testo esamina come il concetto di "spirito vivente" risieda nella quotidianità dell’esistenza, ciò che l’autore, riferendosi alla poesia di Valesio, chiama "la memoria culturale del quotidiano" (91). La terza, e conclusiva, sezione del volume ("Spiritus vivens") torna al centrale tema dell’influenza del pensiero neoplatonico fiorentino sullo sviluppo dell’intero dibattito filosofico-retorico italiano. Colilli offre un suggestivo esame della filosofia dell’immagine in Ficino e di come essa venga sviluppata in Bruno e Vico. Il tentativo di Bruno di formulare una scienza delle immagini che si traduca in un linguaggio tropologico, soprattutto in De imaginum, signorum et idearum compositione, viene messa a confronto con il vichiano concetto di "universali." Particolarmente interessanti sono le pagine in cui Colilli analizza in dettaglio come Bruno struttura la sua "alchemia delle immagini" attraverso un processo che potremmo definire come "retoricizzazione" (139-44). Altrettanto riuscito è il settimo capitolo dedicato al processo metaforizzante formulato nella Scienza Nuova ("Cognitive Properties of the Mental Gaze"). Più che offrire possibili ed in realtà inesistenti soluzioni all’irreversibile separazione tra diverse aree linguistiche, tra intuizione e scienza, tra retorica e realtà esterna, il libro di Colilli pone in risalto l’ancora ben sentito desiderio di tornare ad un’ "armonia" tra dire e conoscere. Tuttavia, il segno ermetico, come si legge nel capitolo nove ("Unsignable Conjuctions"), il quale si muove verso un assorbimento del "nonreale", del caos e del contraddittorio, più che significare un più alto contatto con la realtà a parer nostro esemplifica l’irriducibilità del reale stesso, la reale inesistenza di uno "spirito vivente" che non sia momentanea proiezione del soggetto retorico. La "logica poetica," come lo stesso Colilli sottolinea all’inizio del libro, nasce da ciò che Cacciari definisce "la perdita," il lamentare un possesso ormai negato (15). Non è un caso che nelle ultime pagine Colilli parli del segno "mercuriale" di Pasolini, un gesto linguistico che accoglie la contaminazione come sua essenza (199-200). Tuttavia, piuttosto che vedere la poetica pasoliniana come una nuova alchimia, la si dovrebbe leggere come espressione dell’irremediabilità di un segno "unico," il comprendere appunto la definitiva assenza di un dire unificante e falsamente armonico nella sua stessa "contaminata" natura. Ciò che Pasolini rende chiaro è che più che aspirare ad una "nuova" tropologia, un moderno concetto di logica poetica deve utilizzare la tropologia per minare l’autenticità di un processo conoscitivo soggettivizzante (127). Colilli sembra alludere a questo nel suo esame di De vinculis in genere di Bruno (191-93). Nell’ esame del testo bruniano Colilli mette in risalto come, nel formulare il concetto di un "vincolo" che leghi realtà contrastanti, Bruno paradossalmente contraddice il legame tra significante e significato, e rivela il "non tematizzato spazio dell’abisso che è l’unità del significato" (193). Alcun processo di contaminazione può assorbire l’ "abisso" in un atto di significazione. Il nostro contemporaneo volgerci all’inesauribile fucina rinascimentale è un "necessario" atto archeologico, nel senso che, più che produrre sistemi conoscitivi, il soggetto contemporaneo è tornato all’antica arte della retorica, cioè dell’apparente dominio dell’abisso. Armando Maggi, University of Pennsylvania
Tables of Contents | Norms for Contributors | Upcoming Volumes | Subscription Information | Books Received for Review | Editorial Policy | The Editorial Board | Series Studi e Testi | Mail the Editor Graziella Parati. Public History, Private Stories. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1996. Graziella Parati presenta e analizza le autobiografie di cinque personaggi femminili e la complessità delle loro ricerche personali per il raggiungimento di una propria identità. La Parati non si propone di definire il genere autobiografico ma di evidenziarne l’uso fatto da queste scrittrici appartenenti a periodi storici ed a classi socio-culturali diversi ma accomunate dalla ricerca di una identità femminile nella sfera privata e pubblica. Per la Parati l’autobiografia è una narrazione in cui personaggi ed avvenimenti sono selezionati dallo scrivente per trasmettere un messaggio personale sul proprio passato e presente. La ricerca delle verità autobiografiche non interessa alla Parati. Il suo interesse la porta a privilegiare "those female autobiographies based upon the construction of nondichotomized portrayals of maternal and paternal roles" (9). In tal modo "the female characters become métisses, hybrid, the result of an intertwining of paternal and maternal traces" (10). Tuttavia il nocciolo dell’analisi della Parati non è il matroneum che definisce come sfera privata della donna nei suoi vari ruoli di moglie, figlia e madre "completed by the privileged ‘space of privacy’ inhabited by Man" (6). Il matroneo è uno spazio nello spazio delimitato dal patriarcato ma non totalmente controllato da questo. Tuttavia per eliminarne i confini le autrici considerate dalla Parati partono da una rilettura del ruolo materno all’interno del matroneo. E il ricupero quindi del "matrilinearism" di quella struttura che la Parati denomina "gyneology". Attraverso "gyn technique" è possibile intrecciare legami esclusivi all’interno del matroneum togliendolo dal suo isolamento anzi ricuperando la storia al femminile da questo delimitata e risalente a più generazioni di donne. Tuttavia i due primi capitoli del libro della Parati, dedicati a Camilla Faa’ Gonzaga e Enid Robert, non sembrano rientrare in questo schema. La Historia della Faa’, breve scritto autobiografico del 1622 "contains an explicit description of a woman’s journey through different roles, totally controlled by the Public Man, or Padrone (Lord and Master), as she calls the duke." Camilla scrive per dire la sua verità e l’importanza delle sue sedici pagine sta nel tentativo di definire l’indipendenza femminile in relazione al ruolo attribuitole dal Patriarcato. La Parati conclude che "What is missing in this context is an attempt to construct a dialectic of public and private in texts and how to shape the ‘space of literature’ as a realm in which public history and autobiographical stories can meet as equals" (43). La Parati dedica il suo secondo capitolo all’analisi di A Woman’s Womb: A Surgical Novel (1919) e lo definisce come un tentativo mutilato di autobiografia letteraria. La Robert vuole e sceglie di essere diversa, vuole apparire come "an intermediate being", vicina alla creatività dell’uomo di cui proclama la naturale superiorità. Il libro della Robert ha per la Parati il pregio di essere uno dei primi tentativi femminili di testimonianza sull’isterismo femminile così spesso narrato dagli uomini (70). Il terzo capitolo, dedicato a Le quattro ragazze Wieselberg, teorizza la ricerca di Fausta Cialente per trovare una lingua appropriata a scrivere storie di donne. Presa tra il triestino materno e l’italiano paterno sceglierà il secondo ma sceglierà anche un volontario esilio che le permette di creare "a mediating condition between matricidal and patricidal tensions by deterritorializing the spheres and by reterritorializing her creative realms of authority. Her choice of voluntary exile becomes a protracted choice of marginality, because a new land to inhabit permanently is never found" (94). Elogio dell’imperfezione, opera di Rita Levi Montalcini apparsa nel 1988, è trattata nel quarto capitolo. La Parati sottolinea il fatto che il libro si apre e conclude con citazioni maschili, rispettivamente De Chirico e Primo Levi, creando quindi un andamento circolare che mette in rilievo la predominante cultura maschile. Scrive la Parati che sia per la Cialente che per la Levi Montalcini, "womanhood and motherhood are, within the familial sphere, identified with passivity and acquiescence" e che entrambe cercano di distanziarsi dal silenzio ereditato dalle reciproche madri ed il naturale bisogno personale di farsi ascoltare (102). Attraverso la loro creatività si costruiscono entrambe un iter che permette loro il raggiungimento di un io indipendente. Il libro si conclude con un approfondito studio di Autoritratto di Gruppo di Luisa Passerini. Pubblicato nel 1988 il libro definisce il ruolo femminile pubblico non come meta finale ma come l’inizio "of an alternative path in which the public sphere is not privileged" (125). La Passerini, diversamente dalle altre scrittrici considerate, si propone di analizzare il significato della sua vita privata nel dominio pubblico. La sua scrittura si può definire un "ïbrido formale" che raccoglie la sua voce e quella di altri (attraverso interviste) creando una pluralità di voci che sono parte integrante della storia. La Parati scruta il complesso periodo storico di cui la Passerini è stata una protagonista a partire dagli anni sessanta e sottolinea il fatto che cinque anni dopo la pubblicazione della sua autobiografia scrive un saggio sulla stessa. Per la Parati tale saggio indica che "she has finally come to terms with the fact that the narration of the self is rightfully part of her public production, and that her public self is not at odds with the private identity as they are juxtaposed in the narrative of her life" (151). Graziella Parati ha scritto un libro di notevole interesse per la scelta delle autrici da lei considerate ma soprattutto per la notevole preparazione e abilità con cui ha affrontato e creato legami nell’intricato tessuto del femminismo italiano. Le autobiografie da lei presentate sono oggetto di attenta analisi filtrata attraverso un’accurata e intelligente preparazione che non si limita alla cultura e società italiana, anche se predominanti, inserendo entrambe nel vasto panorama culturale europeo ed americano. Per l’analisi del genere autobiografico, per la valutazione del suo diverso valore in epoche e personalità differenziate, per la ricchezza dei riferimenti e l’abbondanza delle citazioni il libro si presta a molteplici usi, sia in corsi di cultura italiana che come stumento di confronto in corsi globali o nei programmi di Women’s Studies. Lo si consiglia anche a chiunque voglia riflettere e capire il difficile iter femminile per la conquista di uno spazio pubblico e privato coesistenti in armonia. Rosalia Colombo Ascari, Sweet Briar
College
Tables of Contents | Norms for Contributors | Upcoming Volumes | Subscription Information | Books Received for Review | Editorial Policy | The Editorial Board | Series Studi e Testi | Mail the Editor Gian Biagio Conte. The Hidden Author: An Interpretation of Petronius’s Satyricon. Trans. Elaine Fantham. Sather Classical Lectures, 60. Berkeley: U of California P, 1996. Pp. x + 226. This volume presents the author’s six 1995 Sather lectures, ably translated from the Italian by Elaine Fantham, and supplemented by a bibliography, a general index, and an index of classical passages. In Chapter 1, "The Mythomaniac Narrator and the Hidden Author," Conte defines the "hidden author" of his title: "as a deliberate strategy, the author refuses to play a direct role in the account, preferring to make himself a detached external observer, like the reader whose complicity he is seeking" (26-7). In Conte’s reading of Petrionius, the characters in the Satyricon are self-conscious scholastici, students of rhetoric who declaim about their lives. Thus, when early in the novel Encolpius rages at the unfaithful Ascyltus, he echoes Homer’s Achilles and Virgil’s Aeneas. With contrasting citations from pseudo-Longinus’s On the Sublime, Conte aptly characterizes Petrinius’s technique as a "deflation of the sublime" (21). The subsequent appearance of Eumolpus in the picture gallery occasions a useful discussion of parallel scenes in the Aeneid and the Greek novel. Conte concurs with Heinze’s theory that the Satyricon derives generically from the Greek erotic novel. In Chapter 2, "The Mythomaniac Narrator and the Longing for the Sublime," Conte identifies a second source of Petronian irony in addition to the Greek novel: the exaggerated rhetoric of the school declamation. In particular, he cites three literary models for Encolpius’s furious declamation: Achilles’s quarrel with Agamemnon, Aeneas’s tirade against Helen, and Cicero’s Philippics. Petronius exploits another cliché of Neronian schooling by parodying the recognition scene, typified by Odysseus in epic and Orestes in tragedy. As Conte observes, "Petronius’s narrative can only present farcical recognitions like that of Lichas who, by casting a glance at the genitals of Encolpius, rediscovers an old acquaintance" (53). The storm at sea occasions similar treatment. Parallels from Seneca the Elder are used to illustrate the scholastic nature of Encolpius’s meditations on the shipwrecked corpse. Conte adduces important parallels to the poetic manifesto of Eumolpus, praecipitandus est liber spiritus (68-72). In Chapter 3, "The Deceptiveness of Myth," Conte examines how Petronius exploits the extraordinary events characteristic of the ancient novel, and gives them a parodic twist. In the Satyricon, the melodramatic motif of attempted suicide becomes Encolpius and Giton tussling over a mock razor. The primary subtext is the epic model of Virgil’s Nisus and Euryalus. But Giton himself explicitly invokes a tragic precedent, that of Jocasta interceding between Eteocles and Polynices(79). By the same token, Encolpius’s encounter with Circe makes him a second Odysseus, reduced to an anti-hero afflicted by Priapus with impotence. Persecuted by Priapus, Encolpius imagines himself restored to virility by the ithyphallic deity Mercury. Chapter 4, "Sex, Food, and Money: Low Themes versus High Scenarios," first examines Petrionius’s famed Milesian tale, the story of the widow of Ephesus. Conte notes a parallel between this tale and the episode of Encolpius’s slaying of a goose sacred to Priapus: in both narratives the lower elements of sex, food, and money reduce the romance situation to a coarser banality. Elsewhere in the novel, Conte notes, "sex, food, and money produce both an alternative scenario and two major antagonists: Quartilla and Trimalchio" (114). After a brief discussion of Quartilla’s Priapean vigil, the discussion turns to the Cena Trimalchionis, the most celebrated episode in Petrionius’s narrative. Conte notes that while this dinner party vulgarizes Plato’s Symposium, the immediate model is a Latin classic, Horace’s Satire 2.8, in which Fundanius describes Nasidienus’s banquet. Central to the language of the episode is Trimalchio’s linking of rhetoric with cookery, a comparison which originated in the anti-rhetorical context of Plato’s Gorgias. Chapter 5, "The Quest for a Genre (or Chasing Will o’ the Wisps?): Some Skeptical Thoughts on Menippean Satire," examines the questions posed by the Satyricon’s prosimetric form. Conte notes how literary critics from Bakhtin on have defined Menippean satire in ways which add little to our understanding of the classical context. By contrast to Menippean satire, which ridicules gods and heroes in trivial contexts, the Satyricon portrays low characters striving for sublimity. At the same time, Petronius preserves the verisimilitude which Menippean satire so readily sacrifices to paradoxical humor. Even the prosimetric form, considered the hallmark of Menippean works, may in fact link the Satyricon to the Greek comic novel, as has been shown by the recent discovery of papyri fragments containing the so-called romances of Iolaus and Tinuphis (162-65). In Chapter 6, "Realism and Irony," Conte observes that realism in literature lies not in Auerbachian mimesis. Instead, "Petronian realism, if we want to call it realism, is the capacity to transpose into the text different symbolic systems and different spheres and experiences of life, and to do so with an empathy that excludes both sympathy and the aggressivity of satire" (177-79). Conte compares Encolpius’s mythomania with the imperial taste for pantomime. Returning to the theme of realism, Conte concludes with a reading of the short poem, "Quid me constricta spectatis fronte Catones" (132.15). Far from constituting the author’s own apology for his work, Conte shows how this poetic outburst of Encolpius, precipitated by his impotence, confuses reality with literature. Conte’s lectures read very well, thanks in part to the fluid translation of Elaine Fantham. Like the Petronian narrative, they occasionally digress to offer fascinating glimpses of ancient culture. Indeed, his episodic essays manage to create a Petronian atmosphere of novelty and variety while repeating the same thematic material. Conte characterizes the Satyricon in words which seem to describe his own study: "the echoes must be heaped up in order to recall powerful moments of the literary universe" (87). One might protest that the "hidden author" of the title is merely what others call the subtext, which in turn is the traditional object of Quellenforschung, a field in which Conte has few peers. And one might complain that Conte is covering his tracks in his first lecture when, in highlighting the illusory world of the scholastici, he avoids the opening episode of the Satyricon, which explicitly introduces the theme. But such remarks detract little from what constitutes an important and engaging study of Petronius’s enigmatic masterpiece. David Marsh, Rutgers University
Tables of Contents | Norms for Contributors | Upcoming Volumes | Subscription Information | Books Received for Review | Editorial Policy | The Editorial Board | Series Studi e Testi | Mail the Editor Emilia Ferreiro, Clotilde Pontecorvo, Nadja Moreira, Isabel Garcia Hidalgo. Cappuccetto Rosso impara a scrivere, Scandicci (Firenze): La Nuova Italia, 1996. Pp.xiv + 326 + diskette. Only a scholar of the caliber of Raffaele Simone could succeed in prevailing upon four professors of three different countries to cooperate and prepare six essays on psycholinguistics in Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish. Simone does not need an introduction: not only is he professor of linguistics at the University of Rome "La Sapienza," but, for many years, he has been the prime mover behind the publishing house "La Nuova Italia". Emilia Ferreiro teaches at the CINVESTAV (Centro de Investigación y Estudios Avanzados) in Mexico City. Isabel Garcìa Hidalgo is a researcher at the Coordinación de Servicios de Cómputo in El Colegio de Mèxico. Nadja Moreira is a specialist in reading and writing at the Departamento de Letras Vernáculas in the Universitade Federal de Ceará (Fortaleza, Brasil). Finally, Clotilde Pontecorvo teaches Educational Psychology at the University of Rome "La Sapienza." In addition, a fifth scholar participating in the preparation of the book, Daniela Fabbretti, is identified as a member of the Department of Psychology at "La Sapienza." These scholars are united by a common thread, namely, their interest in learning how children solve the problem of putting their thoughts in writing, when asked to prepare a composition on a familiar subject. In addition to the present Italian edition, the book appeared in Spanish under the sponsorship of Editor Gedisa and in Portuguese by Editor Atica, so that the Italian editor can justly boast that the present book is but one of three variants of an original that does not exist (xiv). The challenges encountered in preparing the book were diverse and seemed, at first, overwhelming, since they were of a pedagogical and technical nature. The writers based their work on many previous studies showing that children, regardless of the language used, try to render the spoken language into written symbols at an earlier age than it was heretofore believed. The authors agreed that the text to be studied would be Cappuccetto Rosso (La Caperujita Roja in Spanish, Chapeuzinho in Portuguese), because of its great popularity among children speaking any of the three Romance languages. The main technical problem was the creation of a data bank and of the appropriate software supporting such data. The problem of a data bank was solved by the cooperation between the Mexican and the Italian committees on scientific research (CONACYT in Mexico, CNR in Italy) that resulted in an exchange of researchers. The solution of the software problem was TEXTUS, developed by one of the CNR’s subcommittees, and is explained by Isabel García Hidalgo in the Appendix (239-77) and in a guide, prepared by García Hidalgo and Daniela Fabbretti (279-310). Once they agreed which software was to be used, the scholars had to agree upon the elements to be analyzed, such as line, punctuation, variants of transcription, and morphology. They then researched the hypothesis that children generally tend toward hyposegmentation, namely, they attach to each other many of the elements that would be separate in a grammatically correctly written string. This is similar to what occurs to someone listening to a foreign language with which he or she is not yet familiar and all sounds combine into what seems to be an unending word. The complexity of analysis confronting the authors was exacerbated by the different problems encountered in different languages. While Italian children, for example, have difficulties in transcribing double consonants, Spanish-speaking children are baffled by words whose meanings change according to punctuation, or lack thereof, such as ¿cómo? (how?) and como (as), or ¿por qué? (why) and porque (because). The book is composed of an introduction, six essays, an appendix, a bibliography, and an index. The first essay, "Lingua scritta e ricerca comparativa" by Pontecorvo and Ferreiro, contains the fundamental problems outlined above. It is followed by "I confini tra le parole" by Ferreiro and Pontecorvo, which studies the historical meaning of the word "word" in its significance of segmentation of a written text and further investigates the statistical distributions of hyper and hyposegmentation. Clotilde Pontecorvo’s essay, "L’apostrofo unisce o separa," is of interest only to Italian scholars, since Spanish and Portuguese do not use this sign of punctuation. The fourth essay, Moreira and Pontecorvo’s "Chapeuzinho/Cappuccetto: norme e variazioni grafiche," is a comparative and statistical study of variants occurring mostly in Brazilian Portuguese and of the variants occurring in the spelling of the Italian "Cappuccetto." The following essay, Emilia Ferreiro’s "I confini del discorso: la punteggiatura," is of great interest to all scholars of historical linguistics, as it draws a detailed history of punctuation, beginning as early as the sixth century and ending with a comparative study of how Italian and Spanish children solve the problems of punctuation. The final essay by Ferreiro and Moreira, "Le ripetizioni e le loro funzioni testuali," studies the phenomenon of repetition in Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish. It has already been mentioned that in the appendix, Isabel García Hidalgo explains the characteristics and functions of the system, TEXTUS, that was purposely developed for this project. The files contained in the diskette attached to the book are in ASCII so that they can be read by any word processor. A few years ago, this reviewer wrote an essay on the impact of American English on the Italian language ("L’italiano che commercia con l’anglo-statunitense," Italiano e oltre 5.3 (1990): 131-135). The remarks made eight years ago are not only confirmed by the language employed by the four writers, but the borrowings from American-English have become matter-of-fact, when it comes to the technical jargon of computerism. Expressions like "nella directory," "della subdirectory," "nel file (pronounced [fail]" are common throughout the "Guida rapida per l’uso del sistema TEXTUS." It is also interesting to find the English "clause" translated with the Italian "clausola," a meaning it has only very recently acquired. Of course, this book is intended for the specialist of psycholinguistics and requires, in addition to a modest grounding in this discipline, a moderate knowledge of Spanish, and Portuguese. But it should be read also by linguists in related fields, since it contains a wealth of information that is generally assembled not in one, but in many volumes. Additionally, the bibliography is ample and up-to-date. The book should also be read very attentively by reading specialists, since it may open new vistas in pedagogical problems related to reading. Finally, this treasure warrants the extension of the international cooperation mentioned in my initial paragraph: an English translation should be a matter of course. Robert C. Melzi, Emeritus, Widener
University
Tables of Contents | Norms for Contributors | Upcoming Volumes | Subscription Information | Books Received for Review | Editorial Policy | The Editorial Board | Series Studi e Testi | Mail the Editor Monica Farnetti, ed. Geografia, storia e poetiche del fantastico. Firenze: Leo S. Olschki Eitore, 1995. Pp. 244. Il libro raccoglie le comunicazioni avvenute alla biblioteca comunale di Ferrara nel gennaio 1994, presentate, come scrive nella sua introduzione Monica Farnetti, curatrice dell’opera, "secondo esigenze di ordine rispettivamente geografico, storico e poetico" (5). La raccolta si apre con cinque saggi attestanti il contributo della critica italiana nell’area della geografia del fantastico per una presa di coscienza della tradizione teorica italiana, già postulata da precedenti lavori di gruppo di scuola pisana (La narrazione fantastica, 1983) e romana (I piaceri dell’immaginazione, 1987, e Fantastico e Immaginario, 1988). Il saggio di Barnaba Maj sulla letteratura tedesca sostiene che "l’inquietante è la cifra determinante e caratteristica del fantastico" (12). Attraverso una parziale analisi dell’opera di Kafka il Maj giunge alla conclusione che "l’Unheimliche coincide con la lingua stessa, in uno sforzo neo-gnostico di ricuperare linguisticamente il senso della deiezione, in quanto radicalità dello spaesamento" (24). Il saggio che segue, di Silvia Albertazzi, considera il fantastico nella letteratura inglese attraverso l’ottica di Christopher Candwell, per il quale "soggettività fantastica e oggettività realistica" non sono "nella letteratura britannica, forme separate, ma espressioni di un’unica contrapposizione fra l’io e il mondo" (27). Il fantastico sarebbe quindi presente tanto nei grandi romanzi realistici inglesi quanto nelle narrazioni gotiche, perchè in entrambi i casi si tratta di un mondo fittizio di cui "il fantastico ne è l’esasperazione al fine della sorpresa" (28). La storia fantastica permette al lettore di ritrovarsi tra le paure quotidiane. L’inquietudine socio-politica della nostra epoca favorisce e incrementa il desiderio del fantastico nel quale "si raccontino bugie per dire la verità" (32). Sostiene Salman Rushdie , esponente della letteratura postcoloniale, che "l’irrealtà è l’unica arma con cui la realtà può essere distrutta, in modo che la si possa in seguito ricostruire" (33). Il fantastico di questa letteratura si differenzia dal fantastico occidentale nella sua rappresentazione dei fatti che sono già assurti a mito. Si tratta quindi di personaggi che provocano nel lettore disorientamento più che empatia. Nel confronto che l’autrice fa tra l’opera dei "due maggiori autori anglofoni di letteratura non mimetica, Stephen King e Salman Rushdie" (35) emerge una sostanziale differenza. Per King "lo scrittore di horror non è altro che un agente dello Status quo" (36), per Rushdie è invece l’evocatore "delle paure ancestrali dei coloni nei confronti degli indigeni e della diffidenza di questi ultimi nei confronti dei coloni" (37). Nel terzo saggio Anna Botta presenta la tecnica narrativa di Georges Perec, ispirata alla mise en abyme, al trompe-l’oeil e al puzzle soffermandosi in particolare sulla novella "Storia di un quadro" e sul romanzo "La vita, istruzioni per l’uso." Qui le strategie narrative fanno "dubitare dei propri sensi, dello statuto della realtà quotidiana, dello spazio in cui ci si muove" (48) mettendo in dubbio la nozione stessa dello spazio, creando una nuova inquietante visione del fantastico. Interessante è il saggio di Emilia Perassi che ci propone il caso di Silvina Ocampo, il cui fantastico vede nell’erudizione una "dorata catena" (59) da cui liberarsi orientandosi "piuttosto in direzione del semiotico originario, luogo dal quale deconstruire, anziché innalzare un modo della lingua, quindi del pensiero" (58). La prima parte della raccolta si conclude con Beatrice Bonadiman che attribuisce la presenza del magico nella letteratura russa, anche nell’Ottocento, per la particolare posizione della Chiesa locale che nei confronti di streghe e stregoni si vede costretta a "difenderli dalle azioni violente e vendicative della popolazione" (68). La seconda parte della raccolta presenta una progressione storica del fantastico partendo dal Cligès di Chrétien de Troyes che per Francesco Zambon si iscrive "nella storia di un antichissimo motivo tradizionale che trova origine nell’idea sciamanica dello sposo o della sposa soprannaturali" (76). Alessandro Scarsella analizza le funzioni dell’immaginazione attraverso indagini sulla poetica antica e medioevale e conclude affermando che in Vico l’identificazione di fantasia ed ingegno suggerisce il ricongiungimento del fantastico della vera poesia alla sua originaria natura religiosa. Monica Farnetti sottolinea la necessità di una diversa interpretazione del termine "visione" secondo le varie epoche letterarie e attraverso l’analisi dell’opera del Varano conclude che "nel secolo dei Lumi, e nel corpo della poesia visionaria, la religione immaginativa" (119) soccombe mentre si impone la retorica razionalistica della visione. Per il Lattaruolo il fantastico "è presente piuttosto come componente, per lo più marginale, del romanzo storico, della novella sentimentale in versi, del libretto d’opera, della ballata romantica" (126-2). Le prime esperienze comunque più significative si ritrovano nell’ "elaborazione del lutto, di un legame con il passato che diviene prigionia o malattia . . . primi segni di un fantastico veramente moderno" (132-3). Questa seconda sezione si conclude con le riflessioni di Valentina Contini sulla scrittura di Giorgio Manganelli. Conclusione appropriata visto che per lo scrittore il testo è "uno spazio mentale disegnato da una struttura verbale" e il linguaggio è "incantamento, evocazione allucinatoria" (136). Per lui il linguaggio è organizzazione, anzi autoorganizzazione, perchè può solo comunicare se stesso non avendo nessuna funzione referenziale. Questo significa il rifiuto del verosimile perchè il linguaggio "è il perpetuarsi di una ‘bella fola’, ‘una grande e infinita menzogna’" (140). La terza parte della raccolta si apre con una erudita presentazione sul "Fantastico e Teoria Letteraria" di Filippo Secchieri per il quale "il fantastico è sempre, e non soltanto accessoriamente, la qualificazione di un’esperienza di lettura, di un uso particolare del testo, che prende corpo durante le interazioni che consentono la produzione di significanza" (147). Per questa dimensione relazionale è difficile stabilire l’essenza ultima del fantastico perchè in ogni opera letteraria "il linguaggio normalmente prende congedo dalla realtà . . . lungo una traiettoria che secondo un’indicazione del Manganelli, congiunge l’esperienza letteraria alla condizione originaria del parlante" (149-50). L’alterità e la polisemia sono quindi condizioni inseparabili della finzione letteraria della categoria fantastica, categoria estetica più che genere letterario, in quanto il fantastico è prerogativa della fabula più che dell’intreccio. Nel saggio seguente di Giorgio Rimondi si analizza la formazione dell’immagine speculare che è all’origine del carattere "immaginario" dell’io costituentesi nell’Altro e quindi nell’inconscio, partendo dal presupposto che la dimensione visiva è il punto centrale del pensiero di Lacan. Il Rimondi nota che reale e realtà ricorrono come sinonimi nella valutazione del fantastico e suggerisce una revisione della terminologia critica, alla luce dello sforzo teorico di Lacan. Il fantastico come "uno dei punti di incontro tra l’attività scientifica e quella poetico-letteraria" (177) è quanto sostiene Antonella Fabbrini, essendo l’immaginazione una facoltà essenziale per lo scienziato. Una serrata e interessante presentazione del fantastico nei romanzi di D’Annunzio è il contributo di Francesca Mellone che lo individua "in un codice visivo, sulla traccia di somiglianze che chiedono all’immagine di coniugare il segno iconico con quello verbale" (194). Fabrizio Bagatti nell’esaminare il mondo reale e immaginario della letteratura per l’infanzia vede la seduzione della fiaba "nella presunzione estrema che la parola coincida con il fatto, che il ‘reale’ e l’ ‘immaginario’ siano le due facciate di un medesimo foglio, indivisibili e parimenti necessarie l’una all’ontologia dell’altra" (214). Il libro si conclude con una presentazione molto dettagliata della sfortuna di tale produzione a partire dagli anni quaranta. Ma nel 1970 "si verificò una vera rivoluzione editoriale" (224) con la collana "Cosmo" che ebbe immnediato successo. È l’inizio dell’assunzione di piena "dignità culturale da parte della letteratura dell’immaginario e dei suoi autori" (225) che negli anni 90 assume notevole importanza sia sotto forma di libri che di riviste. Il libro è indubbiamente interessante, e spaziando in tempi, luoghi e letterature diverse, offre una molteplicità d’ipotesi di studio che possono soddisfare interessi di vario tipo o suggerire nuovi itinerari di cultura. Rosalia Colombo Ascari, Sweet Briar
College
Tables of Contents | Norms for Contributors | Upcoming Volumes | Subscription Information | Books Received for Review | Editorial Policy | The Editorial Board | Series Studi e Testi | Mail the Editor Donato Pirovano. Modi narrativi e stile del Novellino di Masuccio Salernitano. Pubblicazioni della facoltà di lettere e filosofia dell’università degli studi di Milano, 168. Sezione di filologia moderna 23. Firenza: La Nuova Italia Editrice, 1996. Pp.281. Donato Pirovano has undertaken to follow up the particular stylistic observations of Petrocchi, Gentile, et al. with a systematic stylistic analysis of Masuccio’s Novellino. His aim is in part to win new appreciation for what Pirovano claims, with some justice, to be one of the most original and striking of Boccaccio’s many imitators. This study, which makes a number of interesting and valuable contributions, is divided into three major sections: one on narrative modes or techniques, a second on rhetorical aspects or figures of speech, and a third on syntax and vocabulary. Beginning with a look at the macro-structure, i.e. Masuccio’s manner of composing the once separate tales into a connected whole, Pirovano indicates how Masuccio has created, through his framing materials and through stylistic features of the narratives, an ongoing conversation between himself and his selected audience. He then lays out a series of narrative "modi" or "tecniche" – almost subgenres – which are typical of Masuccio’s stories. Later these are gathered under three broader rubrics: 1) narrative modes, the more diffuse "racconto-romanzo" and the more focused "novella-episodio" in which events are primarily told by the narrator with very little dialogue; 2) the more theatrical "novella-contrasto" (an encounter between two characters), "mimo" and "commedia" (these seem analogous in their more concentrated or diffuse focus to the episodio and romanzo, although Pirovano neither says so nor arranges them in an order to make the parallel evident) with an emphasis on dialogue, gesture, props, and an audience (the urban crowd, the rest of the convent); and 3) the "novella-polemica" in which a shameful scene is shown and occasions an impassioned tirade, either by a character or by the author himself. Although Pirovano acknowledges that tales cannot always be clearly placed in one or another of these categories, the laying out of these "tecniche" allows for some observations about the differences between Masuccio’s preferences and those of his obvious but reworked model Boccaccio. For example, Pirovano points out Masuccio’s strong interest in the use of dramatic scenes of encounter to juxtapose opposite extremes, and his lack of interest in the verbal play or witty repartee which structure so many of the tales of the Decameron. He also observes stylistic differences among Masuccio’s own modes: for example, between the simple "disse" of the dramatic modes and the more elaborate phrases (e.g., "con rencriscimento grandissimo") of the narrated modes. The chapter on rhetorical figures immediately indicates Masuccio’s aims: especially emotional expressivity and the creation of a self-conscious literariness or elevated discourse. There is a long list of metaphors, illustrating the variety of areas from which Masuccio drew his vehicles (although the tenor seems to be almost always erotic), and comments distinguishing the characteristic aspects of his style (his preference for metaphor over simile, the frequency of hyperbole) as well as on types of figures which Masuccio used little and only in the most conventional manner (e.g. metonymy, personification). I am glad to see that Pirovano pays attention also to the phonic qualities of style, pointing out that Masuccio clearly expected his stories to be read aloud. He remarks, for example, Masuccio’s preference for harsh, hard, or sibilant sounds, his use of cursus, and his tendency to end a tale with rhymed clauses. Fascinating comparisons of an earlier manuscript version of some tales with the later printed version allow Pirovano to note how Masuccio reworked his material to add in some of these effects. Thus we get a glimpse of the polishing process in the development of Masuccio’s prose. Pirovano also analyzes particular passages for their combination of figures to create an effect. "Masuccio non parla, grida," he comments (168), pointing to a piling up of phrases with apostrophe, anaphora, hyperbole, imagery, and evocations of Dante’s hell, all working together towards the aim of intensification. The analysis of syntax shows how Masuccio, while trying to imitate Boccaccio’s long and complex sentences, tends toward simpler syntactical constructions, producing an effect of complexity by the accumulation of parallel phrases or by the interruption and suspension of phrases. Again comparisons with the manuscript versions reveal Masuccio’s efforts to move away from a simple, paratactic syntax to something with a more dignified tone. Pirovano examines the differences between framing material and narrative, and between one mode of narrative and another, to see how syntax might contribute to their distinctiveness. He notes features which seem characteristic of Masuccio but are more generally attributable to a fifteenth-century or a Neapolitan, a novellistic or a humanistic style. Masuccio’s fondness for symmetrical series of phrases, and for Latinisms even in comic episodes, are clearly illustrated. The study offers many good observations: Masuccio’s drawing from Boccaccio’s Corbaccio as well as from the Decameron , his use of proverbs especially in the framing materials, the particular frequency and fruitful use of religious vocabulary, the lack of interest (contrasting with Boccaccio’s) in varying regional dialects to suit the geography of the tale. Pirovano concludes that Masuccio uses a more limited range of focus, mood, style, and tone than Boccaccio, but that this very limitation produces a unified atmosphere which is his most original characteristic in the novella tradition. It is an atmosphere reinforced by Masuccio’s own continually reinserted presence, within the narrative as well as in its framing. This study has its weaker moments when it lapses into lists of examples without much analytic commentary. The chapter on different narrative modes, for example, has no conclusion after its descriptive list and we are left wanting to know a bit more: whether these modes contain all of Masuccio’s tales, for example, or only the most typical ones; how this set fits into the larger set of modes available to the novella tradition, or to the novella writing of his century or of Naples , or at least to the Decameron. These are much broader questions, of course, but they would put the list of modes to further use. At the very least some indication of how these different modes will become part of the analysis of syntactical and rhetorical figures would be helpful at the chapter’s end. The section on Masuccio’s use of verbs is a list of particularly expressive verbs with barely any commentary at all; and the list of metaphors and similes, while illustrating variety, gets a bit tedious. Pirovano is at his best when he analyzes the creation of effects, the varied or specific use of particular figures, the technical differences between one mode and another, the ways in which Masuccio differs from Boccaccio, and the changes in Masuccio’s own writing over time. His conclusion does a good job of summing up what is particular to Masuccio’s style and how it compares to Boccaccio’s. A long, thorough, and up-to-date bibliography ends the volume. Anyone interested in Masuccio’s writing will find this study clearly written and very useful. Janet Levarie Smarr, University of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Tables of Contents | Norms for Contributors | Upcoming Volumes | Subscription Information | Books Received for Review | Editorial Policy | The Editorial Board | Series Studi e Testi | Mail the Editor Maurizio Palma di Cesnola. Semiotica dantesca: profetismo e diacronia. Memoria del tempo, 4. Ravenna: Longo, 1995. Pp. 187. Beginning from the Singletonian premise that the Comedy emulates the "signifying" of Scripture, a kind of writing through which facts retrospectively gloss texts, and textual signs (retrospectively) gloss each other, the author, a professor of Italian literature at the University of Geneva, has himself produced a text to emulate: a magisterial model of how to decode Dante, who wrote the Comedy "non . . . per essere capito, ma per essere interpretato" (167). The author seeks to become Dante’s "lettore modello," sensitive to the most subtle contextual, thematic, structural, semantic, lexical and numerological correspondences or analogies through which one textual locus echoes another (within the text or in a preceding authoritative text), setting up "parallel passages" in which one passage serves to gloss, or more strongly to "risemantizzare," a previous passage, sometimes drawing on a third (external) text to do so. The author’s textual decoding thus has an explicit method, whose principles are outlined in the first chapter, using as an example Dante’s own application of the technique in Monarchia III, ix. It also has a precise focus: the prophecies of the Comedy, more exactly its predictions of future events, whether fictive (post eventum at the time of writing but not at the time of the imagined journey, and thus generally more detailed) or real (ante eventum, and thus more ambiguous). The general structure and classification of the various prophecies of the Comedy occupies the second chapter, which discusses also the distinction among Dante-character (who makes no prophecies), Dante-narrator, and the often-forgotten "terzo incomodo" (27), Dante-author (this discussion is not particularly penetrating, and the author could cite, among others, Teodolinda Barolini’s The Undivine Comedy: Detheologizing Dante [Princeton: Princeton UP, 1992], which is built on the insight that what Dante-narrator says he is doing is not the same as what the poet does); the distinction between narrating time (fifteen years) and narrated time (one week); the distinction between the Trecento reader who can decode references to current events (this is the reader the author seeks to become) and the "lettore eterno" (33) who can decode only the timeless meanings of the text; and the question whether Dante was or thought he was or only pretended to be a prophet. The author’s brief treatment of this last issue, which does not particularly concern him (he declares himself "agnostic" [168]), is the weakest point of the book, because the "limiti sfuggenti" between visio and fictio (in the author’s own evocative expression [168]) are not simply a matter of mimetic or narrative technique, but the result of a profound insight into the hypnotic power of finite being (the source of cupidigia), an insight which is very much connected with the ultimate prophetic stance of the text (the truth it seeks to reveal, or rather the conversion it aims to trigger). To be fair, however, these matters are the province of the "eternal" reader, not the decoder of contemporary concrete (political) references the author aspires to become. The third chapter is the substance of the book, and it is, in a word, mesmerizing. The author analyzes the messianic predictions of the Comedy as one "profezia in progress" (162), resolving "dis-homogeneous" (168) textual details into one evolving system: hence the "diacronia" of the title. As contemporary political circumstances change, the prophecy evolves in response, and the text gives new content to earlier prophecies by providing "parallel passages" which re-direct their interpretation. The prophecies are the canonical three, modeled on the three Augustan prophecies of the Aeneid: veltro (Inf. 1), 515 (Purg. 33), and Cacciaguida’s prediction of the "incredible" future feats of a nine-year-old (Par. 17). To these the author adds a fourth, culminating, prophecy, modeled on the Christological-imperial prophecy of Virgil’s fourth Eclogue ("Iam redit et Virgo, redeunt Saturnia regna"). In an analysis that is breathtaking in its ingenuity and precision, though in some (especially numerological) details perhaps overly subtle, he interprets the "DILigite iustitiam qui iudicatis terraM" of Par. 18 as Dante’s own announcement of the return of Virgo-iustitia (= monarchy, the plenitudo aetatis), to be triggered, in part, by his own Monarchia. The prophecy of the veltro (1307, in the author’s chronology) remains an intentionally generic imperial prophecy, invoking a triumphant return of justice, but written so that Federico da Montefeltro (perhaps Dante’s host) could recognize himself as a candidate. By the time of the Purgatorio (1310-1313), Henry VII has emerged as the real veltro, Dante’s Augustus, and Dante systematically prepares his anointment as the 515 by designating, in earlier Purgatorial passages, Clement V (fuia) and Philip the Fair (gigante) as the lupa he is to destroy by the year 1315 (515 years from the coronation of Charlemagne). The death of all three by late 1314 coincides with a pause in writing the Comedy after Par. 5 (the Justinian cantos), during which Dante writes the Monarchia to replace the savior Henry VII, giving future veltri the philosophical arms needed to vanquish the lupa. He then, through a passage in Par. 16, re-dates the 515 prophecy to designate 1314, the year in which the fuia-gigante died and the Monarchia appeared, and critiques his own performance as "apprendista profeta" (113) in the rebuke of Aquinas (Par. 13). Through carefully crafted parallel passages, he then begins to prepare the ideological arms Henry VII lacked. Many of the single interpretations advanced have been proposed at one time or another (and sometimes forgotten) over the last seven hundred years, but perhaps never have they been integrated into such a coherent, persuasive and carefully argued system. Dozens of proposals are new, illuminating many details of the text. Those who have a vested interest in one interpretation or another will no doubt find much to dispute in the author’s hypotheses, which he himself always advances with exemplary prudence; for one who does not, this book provides a remarkably persuasive picture. It also provides a cogent argument for its chronology of Dante’s works, which is essentially the standard one proposed by Parodi. (It is startling, however, that the author never raises the possibility that the Letter to Cangrande, at points quite important to his arguments, might not be authentic.) The book is beautifully written, lucid, elegantly structured, suffused with gentle ironic humor; despite its daunting title, it is at times as gripping as a detective story. Above all, the reader feels that he has entered Dante’s workshop, and knows the poet, his procedures, and his poem better than before. Christian Moevs, University of Notre
Dame
Tables of Contents | Norms for Contributors | Upcoming Volumes | Subscription Information | Books Received for Review | Editorial Policy | The Editorial Board | Series Studi e Testi | Mail the Editor Stefano Prandi. Il "diletto legno". Aridità e fioritura mistica nella Commedia. Saggi di "Lettere italiane", 46. Firenze: Olschki, 1994. Pp. 145. Stefano Prandi’s impressive book is a fine example of a genre by now well established in Dante studies on both sides of the Atlantic: the thematic monograph, tightly but revealingly focused on a particular aspect of the Commedia’s text, and given scope and resonance by its author’s immersion in both the accumulated history of Dante scholarship and the primary cultural materials generated across the centuries between the classical era and Dante’s own times. One suspects (though Prandi does not admit it!) that it began life as a tesi di laurea; if so, any laurels it gained, even merely metaphorical ones, were well deserved. It is a solid piece of scholarship, which merits the attention of any reader seriously interested in the mystical aspect of Dante’s thought and poetry. As his title suggests, Prandi is interested above all in the complementary, symbolic dyad, aridity-flowering, and the ways in which the former element – consistently seen as negative and tending toward evil, and manifested in a variety of significant details, especially in the first cantica – yields in the course of the poem’s development to the full understanding of and participation in the latter underlying the protagonist’s conclusive experience in Paradiso. The book is divided into two separate but related sections. In the first, "L’albero del male: Inf. XXXIV, 1-84" (13-86), the author begins from the last canto of Inferno and its depiction of Lucifer. He analyzes its symbolic ramifications in considerable detail and traces the line of imagery connecting trees and the Cross. The latter is familiar, of course, in the positive context of Christ’s sacrifice for mankind, but is studied here per viam negativam, along a path that leads from the parodic dead trees of the suicides’ wood (by way of the evocation of Lucifer’s own position as a "grottesca scimmiottatura" [52] of Christ’s crucifixion) to the inverted image of the Tree of Life become crux diaboli and therefore irredeemably sterile. Sterility is definitively counteracted in the second essay, "Il tema mistico della fioritura nella Commedia" (87-132). The first part studies "il simbolismo dell’albero fiorito nelle tradizioni leggendarie medievali," ranging widely across medieval culture and dealing especially effectively with works produced and circulating in less highly educated circles than those of the clerical/intellectual élite. From this more general background the essay’s second section zeroes in on the Commedia, especially Purgatorio and Paradiso, examining the distillation of this cultural material that takes place in Dante’s poem, to the point where the motif of flowering-into-ripeness becomes a key descriptive element in the Commedia’s depiction of its principal character’s spiritual experience. Both essays are nourished by their author’s wide reading in primary and secondary materials (in particular, Prandi, not without beneficial consequences for his argument, shows a much greater awareness of English-language scholarship than is the norm in Italy), and both offer inspiration for further scholarly reflection on the nature and extent of Dante’s involvement in the (or at least a) mystical tradition of the Christian Middle Ages. To that extent, the book more than fulfills its author’s hope that it will be "un contributo stimolante e un ulteriore invito alla lettura dell’alta, inesauribile poesia della Commedia" (12). Steven Botterill, University of California
at Berkeley
Tables of Contents | Norms for Contributors | Upcoming Volumes | Subscription Information | Books Received for Review | Editorial Policy | The Editorial Board | Series Studi e Testi | Mail the Editor Amilcare A. Iannucci, ed. Dante: Contemporary Perspectives. Toronto Italian Studies: Major Italian Authors. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1997. Pp. xxii + 299. It is a habit of Anglo-American dantisti, especially those working in North America, to reflect upon what they are doing, usually with some degree of wonder: how is it that after almost seven hundred years, and in an intellectual, religious, and cultural climate so removed from Trecento Florence, they can produce so much work, such interesting work, on Dante? While there is of course a world-wide Dante industry (Iannucci notes that at least 1,500 publications on Dante appeared between 1984 and 1988 [x]), there is a peculiar vitality to English-language Dante scholarship, a sense of new questions, new approaches, new results, new discoveries. Every few years that vitality contemplates itself, perhaps seeking to explain itself, in a volume of commissioned or recent essays covering a broad range of issues. In the last ten years, such volumes include Amilcare Iannucci’s earlier collection Dante Today (special issue of Quaderni d’italianistica 10.1-2 [1989]), Gian Carlo Alessio’s and Robert Hollander’s Studi americani su Dante (Milano: Franco Angeli, 1989), Dino Cervigni’s Dante and Modern American Criticism (Annali d’Italianistica 8 [1990]), Rachel Jacoff’s Cambridge Companion to Dante (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1993), and Theodore Cachey’s Dante Now: Current Trends in Dante Studies (Notre Dame: U of Notre Dame P, 1995). While these volumes differ in their motivation, origin, and audience, they are all useful, with a number of important contributions. Amilcare Iannucci’s new volume is one of the very best, for the unfailingly high standard of its essays, its broad range, and its intelligent structure. The fourteen essays, of which nine have been previously published in some form, mirror the dominant concerns of recent Anglo-American criticism, as reflected also in most of the collections mentioned above. The editor himself notes a special interest in Dante’s "minor works," a focus on formal, intertextual, and narrative structures in the Comedy along with the question of Dante’s poetics, and the history of the poem’s reception (x, xx). A number of the essays touch on each other’s concerns: the palinode as a fundamental interpretative model for Dante’s works, the (textual) grounding of Dante’s unique claims to authority, the adequacy of Auerbach’s and Singleton’s typological analysis of Dante’s poetics, Dante’s metaliterary and auto-exegetical reflection, the implications of gender and sexual differentiation in the Comedy and the relation between literary text and life (Dante’s and ours). Three essays are dedicated to "nodal" or "structurally determining" episodes: Paolo and Francesca, Ulysses, and Earthly Paradise. An invaluable feature of the volume (and presumably of the new series in which it appears) is that each essay provides a carefully selected but extensive bibliography; taken together, these bibliographies provide an up-to-date road map for many of the major issues in contemporary Dante studies. There is also a thorough index of names and textual passages. The editor’s introduction skillfully weaves together the themes of the essays and proposes its own explanation for Dante’s contemporary success: the Comedy is a "producerly" text, both "open" and "closed," combining "the easy accessibility of the readerly with the complex discursive strategies of the writerly" (xiii-xiv). Iannucci is echoing his remarks in Dante Today (iv). The opening essay, Zygmunt Baranski’s "Dante and Medieval Poetics," stresses the auto-exegetical nature of Dante’s work, his "obsession with the ars poetica" (8), and his insistent metaliterary reflections, which become progressively more radical and unorthodox; in this context Baranski discusses both the poem’s title and the authenticity of the Letter to Cangrande. Albert Ascoli’s "Palinode and History in the Oeuvre of Dante" proposes the palinode as "paradigmatic" for "Dantean intertextuality" (25), and shows its essentially constructed or rhetorical character by examining a tension among the Monarchia, Convivio, and Commedia. Michelangelo Picone’s brilliant "Dante and the Classics" studies the various Dantean canons of auctores, the passage from an Ovidian to a Virigilian model, from the Remedia amoris to the Metamorphoses as the Comedy’s primary classical intertext, and from imitatio to an anti-classicist aemulatio, in which "the recovery of classical poetry is conditional on its complete translation and total re-writing in the language of Christianity" (60). In "Dante and the Bible: Biblical Citation in the Divine Comedy," through a number of illuminating analyses of specific passages, Christopher Kleinhenz shows "how Dante uses the biblical text as an integral part of his own text," and "how meaning in the Comedy may be either generated or enhanced by a consideration of the larger referential context provided by the biblical tradition" (77). Iannucci’s own essay, "Forbidden Love: Metaphor and History (Inferno 5)," elegantly expands the dominant critical tradition on Paolo and Francesca (the critique of courtly love) to read the episode as emblematic of the tragic social consequences of cupidity (for which adulterous passion becomes the central metaphor), a pattern embodied in "the tragic spectacle of history" (103). "Dante’s Ulysses: Narrative and Transgression" is a synthesis of some of the central insights of Teodolinda Barolini’s The Undivine Comedy: Detheologizing Dante (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1992): "if the pilgrim learns to be not like Ulysses, the poet is conscious of having to be ever more like him. The Paradiso, if it is to exist at all, cannot fail to be transgressive; its poet cannot fail to be a Ulysses" (119). This Ulyssean component is mirrored in the textual fracturing, stuttering, and "jumping" of the Paradiso. In "Narrative Design in Earthly Paradise," Richard Lansing studies "the conceptual structure" of Purgatorio 28-33, showing how it mirrors that of each terrace of Purgatory: "the eighth terrace, gathering and integrating all of what comes before, embraces the previous seven and simultaneously transcends them by going one beyond, to achieve the definitive view of the role of the individual within the context of human history" (142). Lino Pertile ("A Desire of Paradise and a Paradise of Desire: Dante and Mysticism") stresses that what Dante depicts in Paradise is not union with God, but "the way in which Dante the pilgrim draws closer and closer to that point" (161). What he is depicting is desire, "for where there is no desire left to fill, there is no language and no poetry" (163). In "Dante and the Authority of Poetic Language," Steven Botterill argues strongly that Dante did not share the skepticism about language and referentiality attributed to him by postmodern critics, "the fruit of a theologically deracinated criticism" (177). That language has limits does not mean that Dante’s quest for a word both ornata and santa (174), epitomized in the discourse of St. Bernard in the empyrean, ends in falsehood, fiction, and chaos. Joan Ferrante ("Dante and Politics") provides a survey of political issues in Dante’s works, with wide-ranging references, and introduces the theme of Dante’s "sexual politics," in which androgyny becomes a "positive force" (191). This suggestion is extensively developed by Carolynn Lund-Mead in "Dante and Androgyny": the fusion of masculine and feminine "express the crossing of psychic and ontological boundaries" (197), becoming an image of the Incarnation ("Beatrice is woman’s flesh. Without Christ as Word made flesh, Beatrice would not be the flesh which Dante makes word" (204). John Ahearn ("Singing the Book: Orality in the Reception of Dante’s Comedy") explores the relation between oral ("an acoustic or musical event" [226]) and literary ("silent textual decodification" [222]) reception of the Comedy in Dante’s time, showing how central public performance was to the Comedy’s penetration of "all levels of Trecento society" (226). Deborah Parker’s "Interpreting the Commentary Tradition to the Comedy" is a lucid survey of the commentaries to the poem, focussing especially on the Trecento and the Renaissance, and classifying their uses; the essay includes a particularly useful bibliography. The volume ends with William Franke’s "Reader’s Application and the Moment of Truth in Dante’s Divine Comedy," which initially appeared in Lectura Dantis 12 (1993), and was incorporated into Dante’s Interpretive Journey (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1996). His Heideggerian reading supplies a telling critique of the notion, derived from Auerbach and Singleton, that "the poem’s claim to historical reality" is grounded "primarily in its mimetic realism"; through an elegant analysis of the Paolo and Francesca episode, Franke shifts that grounding to the interpretative act of reading itself, through which we (mis)define ourselves in history, like Francesca. Striking, in the volume as we have briefly surveyed it, is the absence of sustained reflection on philosophical, theological, moral, scientific, historical, and philological issues. While Americans have typically left the latter to the Italians, and the Singletonian era has passed for the others, still the volume under-represents the recent work in such fields (by Boyde, Durling, Martinez, Scott, Mazzotta, Cornish, Kay, Morgan, Carugati, Armour, Ryan, Najemy, to name just a few among many practitioners), thus perhaps unconsciously helping to define such concerns as marginal in the current critical climate. With this reservation, there may be no more useful volume of essays to put in the hands of contemporary students of Dante’s poem. Christian Moevs, University of Notre
Dame
Tables of Contents | Norms for Contributors | Upcoming Volumes | Subscription Information | Books Received for Review | Editorial Policy | The Editorial Board | Series Studi e Testi | Mail the Editor Stephen Murphy. The Gift of Immortality: Myths of Power and Human Poetics. Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 1997. Pp. 319. This study examines a central topos in Western literature – the claim of poets to bestow immortality on heroes and patrons – and situates it within a broader intellectual context. In his introduction, Murphy summarizes four modern thinkers who guide his inquiry: Vico, Cassirer, Adorno, and Marcel Mauss; and he points to the writers whose use of the topos he will analyze: Cicero, Horace, Ovid, Petrarch, Politian, and Budé. Chapter 1 reviews a series of related classical themes. Among the Greeks, Murphy examines the Homeric concept of kleos, fame, and the social context of gift-giving in the Iliad and of song in the Odyssey; and he discusses Pindar’s "traffic in praise" (a phrase borrowed from Leslie Kurke’s 1991 study). Among the Romans, he reviews Cicero’s ideal of literary glory, expecially in the Pro Archia, which is a source for the anecdote about Alexander’s wish for a Homer to celebrate him. For the attitudes of Roman poets towards their patron Augustus, Murphy analyzes Horace Odes 4.8-9, and Ovid, Ex Ponto 4.8. Chapter 2 deals with Petrarch, beginning with his political views of Rienzi and the Visconti, and culminating in an analysis of the topos of fame in his Africa. In this unfinished Latin epic, Scipio’s deeds are framed by somnia of military and poetic glory. The second of these, the dream in which Homer reveals to Ennius the future triumph of Scipio, is glossed as a form of "poetic metempsychosis" (114). In Chapter 3, "The Quattrocento and Poliziano," Murphy begins by recounting how Vergerio and Salutati protested the destruction of the Mantuan statue of Virgil in 1397. Next, he surveys what humanists like Filelfo, Panormita, and Guarino wrote about patronage, which introduces a discussion of Poliziano’s Ambra, a Latin poem celebrating Homer and Poliziano’s patron Lorenzo de’ Medici. Next, Murphy traces what he calls the tradition of "poetic paleology . . . the representation of the primordial role of poetic language in forming individual and social humanity" (159). Here Murphy echoes the language of Vico, whose "theological poets" he finds foreshadowed in Petrarch, Boccaccio, and several Quattrocento humanists. Central to Poliziano’s Nutricia is the myth of Orpheus, who is associated with poetic frenzy, furor, a notion which Murphy explicates by adopting Foucault’s analysis of madness. But more important, Orpheus is an archetype of the city founder; and Poliziano’s Nutricia insistently alludes to the relations between ancient poets and their powerful patrons. Chapter 4 deals with the French humanist Guillaume Budé. Initially, Murphy’s discussion of Budé’s "mystical philology" (203) seems to shift his perspective from pagan to Christian culture, the theme of Budé’s last work, De transitu Hellenismi ad Christianismum (1535). Thus, if "the divine word bestows humanity’s goal, immortality" (211), the context is clearly not that of secular poetic fame. But Murphy then turns to earlier works by Budé which discuss the relations of scholars and royal patrons: the Latin dialogue De philologia (1530) and the French treatise L’institution du Prince (1519). In a brief epilogue, Murphy examines a passage in Ugo Foscolo’s Dei sepolcri. There is much to admire and much to be learned in this voluble and often valuable study. Murphy has read widely in classical and humanistic scholarship, and judiciously deploys more recent critical notions in his interpretations. While his discussion of Greek and Roman texts holds many insights, the heart of the book is the heroic phase of Italian humanism from Petrarch to Poliziano. Compared to these scholar-poets, the learned but prosaic Budé seems the odd man out. For all his speculation, Murphy generally writes lucidly, avoiding the jargon and convolutions that make theory so difficult to read. True, there are occasional lapses, as when Murphy borrows from Foucault in discussing poetic inspiration (175): "The long tradition of poetic furor maintains the positive transcendent function of word magic inherited from archaic culture, before slipping into the status of mere illusion with the advent of modern madness" (175). But Murphy is no ideologue, and among his modern guides only Vico recurs persistently. This brief synopsis scarcely does justice to the richness of this volume. Murphy’s book is a provocative study, which, by combining close reading with general theory, revitalizes a central theme in Western letters. David Marsh, Rutgers University
Tables of Contents | Norms for Contributors | Upcoming Volumes | Subscription Information | Books Received for Review | Editorial Policy | The Editorial Board | Series Studi e Testi | Mail the Editor Patricia E. Grieve. Floire and Blancheflor and the European Romance. Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature, 32. Cambridge: UP, 1997. Pp. 240. In this widely researched book, ten years in the making, Patricia Grieve presents a scarcely known, unedited version of Crónica de Flores y Blancaflor (BN Madrid MS 7583). Grieve is to be commended for tackling this forgotten text and its vast context. Given the legend’s wide transmission, its surviving witnesses demand a solid philological examination. Chapter One discusses proper names, toponyms, genealogical evidence, and narremes. Such correspondences are helpful in attempting to establish textual relations; however, here they are not rigorously investigated. Ecdotic work is only hinted at by relying on disparate secondary authorities. It is never clear how all the surviving witnesses and traditions fit together. Only after completing the painstaking philological groundwork can one begin to discuss the dependence of one strain or author on another. As it stands, the reader is left with an incoherent and unconvincing hodge-podge. The study is plagued by too many goals, resulting in its conflicting methodologies and lack of focus. It sometimes historicizes a text, elsewhere gestures in the direction of gendering, and also takes some tantalizing yet unfulfilled steps toward reception theory. The book could best be defined as a comparative study, yet its comparisons tend to be tenuous and not exhaustive: between one text and another, or one national tradition and another, or sometimes among three or four texts. A less confusing approach would have been to simply compare the respective plots, characters, genealogies, motifs, etc., of all exemplars point by point. In Part Two, the argument turns thematic, centering on concepts of engin and conseil en route to discussing the importance of Divine Intervention and the particular (forced) conversion motif in the Crónica. Grieve has unwittingly fallen into the chauvinism that ensnared so many nineteenth- and early twentieth-century editors and philologists, namely, the insistence upon the primacy of one text over another on nationalistic grounds. In fact, much of the evidence she arrays to prove the Crónica antedated Filocolo more plausibly suggests that the two were close textual relatives belonging to the same later generation or to the third (Spanish-Italian) strain that Gaston Paris hypothesized. Grieve also makes the unsupported claim that the Spanish prose romance may have "perhaps [reflected] what was in the lost part of the Italian Cantare" (74). One of Grieve’s agendas was to prove that "much of what has been considered to be original material by Boccaccio [in Filocolo] occurs in the Chronicle" (33). This book will disappoint Italianists who hope for new insights into Boccaccio’s early works. Grieve is frankly perplexed at Boccaccio’s use of pagan gods, understanding very little about his classicism (apparently unaware of Teseida or of David Anderson’s Before the Knight’s Tale) and indicating, without completely grasping, the importance of Rome to Italian authors. She confesses her difficulty with Filocolo: "In the beginning of the story . . . the reader wants to transpose the pagan gods to a Christian significance . . . [but] simply gives up after a while" (177). In one instance, she attributes a motif of the hero drinking tiger’s milk to the presumed Spanish model instead of recognizing an echo of Camilla’s infancy in Aeneid, Book I (98). She more than once alludes to the autobiographical elements in Filocolo, conveniently waving aside Hollander’s comments on the ironic distance between Boccaccio and his narrators (133). She also challenges Smarr’s claim that Boccaccio fused the pilgrimage and conversion topoi to a preexisting romance (139). Despite her determination to undermine Boccaccio’s originality and complexity by proposing his use of a Spanish model, she is more than once forced to concede that Filocolo is "a work of no little achievement" (132) with respect to the Floire and Blancheflor tradition and to acknowledge "Boccaccio’s considerable achievements . . . in his transformation of the legend" (133). The second half of Chapter 5 attempts more straightforward Boccaccio criticism (Filocolo on its own terms), but this attempt is weakened by a scant knowledge of other Boccaccio works and their critical reception. Surprisingly, Grieve does not list a single manuscript or early print edition of Boccaccio’s Filocolo nor of the anonymous Cantare di Fiorio e Biancifiore, relying instead on outdated critical editions (and translations) to discuss these works and ignoring more recent contributions by scholars such as Balduino or De Robertis. The book’s one clear contribution to Floire and Blancheflor studies is to announce that there is an earlier Spanish version than the prose romance (c. 1530s). It does not, however, offer sufficient proof that the newly identified Spanish MS was the original, nor does it furnish convincing evidence regarding its date of composition, nor does it supply a compelling reason why Boccaccio would have relied on a Spanish version. (In fact, a study of late medieval and early Renaissance book inventories would have revealed the amazing number of copies of Boccaccio’s works in Spanish libraries.) To her credit, Grieve does assemble a wealth of data and an extensive bibliography on the various European traditions of this medieval legend. The book will be useful for those interested in studying narrative motives such as the "vows of the peacock," the garden, or the shipwreck. Broadly viewed, the study illustrates the intricate web of political, cultural, and literary relations between and among countries in the Middle Ages. Grieve also rightly points out the fluidity of medieval genres and the way in which different redactors shaped a story according to local needs. The book furnishes some precious evidence about female readership in the late Middle Ages and signals what sounds like a very interesting manuscript anthology to be examined in future cyclification studies. Gloria Allaire, Purdue University
Tables of Contents | Norms for Contributors | Upcoming Volumes | Subscription Information | Books Received for Review | Editorial Policy | The Editorial Board | Series Studi e Testi | Mail the Editor David Wallace. Chaucerian Polity: Absolutist Lineages and Associational Forms in England and Italy. Stanford: UP, 1997. Pp. xix + 555. In this engaging and substantial study, Wallace sets out to explore various Italian and English cultural events and their impact upon contemporary literary figures, most significantly Chaucer and the great Italian Trecento authors. Bringing considerable erudition to his analyses of literary works, Wallace situates the literary texts in relation to the interlinked sites of "medieval" London and "Renaissance" Florence, testing the validity of such terminology and suggesting that literary critics should instead "suspend belief in cultural partitions" (7). Wallace’s core argument is that Chaucer understood the works of Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarch, and others within contexts of political conflict and ideological warfare, most significantly that of Florence, whose committee rule was an associational form, and Lombardy, whose Visconti leadership constituted an absolutist lineage. The literary argument that Wallace makes about Chaucer is thus twofold: Chaucer can be profitably read in relation to his Italian predecessors, and, in turn, the study of Chaucer can provide significant resources and points of departure for the exploration of his predecessors in light of the political contexts of England and Italy. The first three chapters take up the concern of associational forms (that is, the collective bodies through which individuals experienced themselves as political subjects, for example, parties, guilds, fraternities, households), situated in relation to Chaucer’s Florentine and Lombard visits of 1373 and 1378, respectively. Rejecting the simplistic, and widespread, belief that Chaucer’s reaction to Italy was that of a bedazzled tourist, Wallace finds instead that Chaucer’s appreciation for Italian culture was that of a seasoned diplomat; his visits to Florence and Lombardy exposed him not only to the most crucial conflict of the Italian Trecento, between republican libertas and dynastic despotism, but also to the literary authors exemplifying the cities and their forms of polity. Visits to Florence, and then to Milan and Pavia, exposed Chaucer to the writings of Boccaccio and Petrarch in conjunction with other forms of cultural production both popular and devotional. Chaucer, Wallace argues, encountered the Italian texts within the context of this Florentine-Lombard struggle, and hence his own understanding and appreciation of the texts themselves were informed by the political situations that helped shape them. After situating Chaucer within these Italian political contexts, Wallace considers the significance of Chaucer’s Italian encounters to his literary enterprise, with particular emphasis upon the compagnye of the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. Beginning with an exposition on the associational forms of compagnye (or felaweshipe), Wallace argues that the General Prologue provides the first instance of Chaucer’s authorial signature, the "sixth of six" topos – "Ther was also a REVE, and a MILLERE, / A SOMNOUR, and a PARDONER also, / A MAUNCIPLE, and myself – ther were namo" (1.542-44) – and that this signature is articulated with both artistic confidence and personal anxiety about the complex division of labor in English society. Guild culture and female slavery in Florence had already shown Chaucer how women, "commodified as voiceless figures within a new symbolic order" (19), posed the threat of coming to recognize their own symbolic significance, which in turn prompted misogynistic complaints from Boccaccio, Wallace finds. Chaucer was thus compelled to assess gender in relation to speech and power in his own work, drawing off Boccaccio’s literary expressions of gender politics. Wallace asserts that English guilds help account for some of the more salient differences between Chaucer’s compagnye and Boccaccio’s brigata, in particular their respective attitudes toward collective behavior. For while the two framed collections, Canterbury Tales and Decameron, share an apparent commitment to the exploration of associational forms, Chaucer favors the more inclusive social groupings illustrated in the General Prologue than the young aristocrats and social hierarchy of Boccaccio’s Decameron. Several chapters continue with analyses of the Canterbury Tales and its compagnye. Since Chaucer includes various subgroups as well as unassimilable individuals, Wallace, making clear that it should not be construed as an idealized associational form, explores the extent to which associational polity is refigured and foregrounded in specific tales. In the Knight’s Tale, Chaucer stages an act of political rupture: the unraveling of associational forms under Thesian polity. Characterized by Theseus’s resistance to political felaweshipe coupled with the absence of wifely counsel, the Knight’s Tale demonstrates how the presence or absence of wifely counsel and women’s eloquence is connected to larger issues of power and rule. Chaucer’s cutting of Boccaccio’s Teseida, too, emphasizes the significance of Thesian polity, for while Chaucer retained most of the business and political issues, he rejected many of the Teseida’s concerns with social and sexual relationships. Wallace maintains that gender politics in the Canterbury Tales, a recurring concern for both him and Chaucer, can help us explore aspects of statecraft that are problematic or contradictory, especially if gender theory is employed as a means of approaching medieval people as political subjects. Wallace then travels informally along a |