Storie e linguaggi

The internal relations within the recensio of the multiversion Alexanderlied (each of the three witnesses representing an autonomous Fassung), like those of similar early vernacular documents, is a tough problem to textual criticism and to the understanding of the involved cultural phenomena. This is the reason why the scholarship of German medieval literacy displayed an inborn aptitude for “new”, material approaches. This paper reassesses the ecdotic issues posited by the varia lectio of the Alexanderlied’s manuscripts (which is difficult to be classified and evaluated with neo-Lachmannian procedures) and the editorial treatment they received by the “page paradigm” philology. Further, the paper will question how the digital documentary editions and digital archives (so patently advantageous for the editorial treatment of similar early vernacular traditions) could replace, in their hermeneutic rank, the interpretative strength of the classical philological method and of its hypotheses. In other terms: does the means justify the end?

Some visions in Petrarch’s Canzoniere have a peculiar feature hitherto unnoticed: they appear as concrete and allegorical images that spring out of some details scattered through the immediately preceding poems. This technique is a forerunner of the genre of emblems which was developed in the Sixteenth century. Emblems, as invented by Andrea Alciato, combine poetry (usually epigrams) with a pictorial representation of its content, thus using two artistic languages. This essay claims that at the origin of such a combination were Petrarch’s visions in the Canzoniere and in the Triumphs.

The paper focuses on the manuscript Naples, Biblioteca Nazionale “Vittorio Emanuele III”, Fondo Nazionale, ms. XIII C 34. Through an analysis of the artifact and of a number of vernacular poems added by previous owners it is possible to connect most of these rhymes to the court of Alberto III Pio.

The paper focuses on the analysis of 'conversare' and 'conversazione' in Medieval texts (in particular Dante’s and Petrarca’s works written in Latin and Vernacular) and in the major Renaissance treatises of the “behavioral conduct” (Cortegiano, Galateo, La civil conversazione, etc.). The second part examines the semantic evolution the two lexical units and the modern meaning that they acquired permanently in the grand siècle French into the set of texts from the so-called “civilization of the conversation”.

The aim of this article is to retrace “la questione della lingua” in the 16th century in order to suggest a different approach to, as well as another perspective on, this crucial period of the history of Italian literature and language.
Particular attention is given to those factors, which are usually considered marginal (book market, economic situation, religious influence, popular texts / works, and so on) in order to show how they interacted with the question of language during the 16th c. The main idea is that these very factors had a profound impact on Italian society and determined the socio-linguistic situation that ensued in the Italian peninsula.