Passion, Procession, and the People: An Interdisciplinary Panel
Sponsoring Organization(s)
Italians and Italianists at Kalamazoo
Organizer Name
Laurie Shepard
Organizer Affiliation
Boston College
Presider Name
Karina F. Attar
Presider Affiliation
Queens College, CUNY
Paper Title 1
Dido in Boccaccio: Reception and Poetic Memory of a Tragic Myth
Presenter 1 Name
Sabina Tuzzo
Presenter 1 Affiliation
Univ. del Salento
Paper Title 2
Boccaccio's Parody of the Order of Saint Anthony: Historicizing Frate Cipolla as an Antonite Friar (Decameron VI.10)
Presenter 2 Name
Alex Cuadrado
Presenter 2 Affiliation
Columbia Univ.
Paper Title 3
My Lady Cures All: Guido Cavalcanti, Guido Orlandi, and the Poetic Extremes of a New Style
Presenter 3 Name
Akash Kumar
Presenter 3 Affiliation
Univ. of California-Santa Cruz
Paper Title 4
The Poet, the City, and the Donna Angelicata
Presenter 4 Name
Laurie Shepard
Start Date
10-5-2018 1:30 PM
Session Location
Schneider 1255
Description
The panel explores the phenomenology of the lady walking among the people of the city, the street serving as the public theater that reveals the extraordinary virtue of the donna angelicata. Deeply personal and impersonal, the trope is local but translated into the universal. Initiated by Guinizelli in his sonnet Io voglio del ver la mia donna laudare, the lady who passes through the people of the city opens the poetry of the Dolce stil nuovo to explore new philosophical and spiritual insights, from the experience of inscrutability and ineffability in the presence of the “donna-dea” in Cavalcanti’s Chi è questa che ven ch’ogn’om la mira, to the “sospiro” in Dante’s Tanto gentile e tanto onesta pare, from which a congregation seems to issue forth. Nor do such extravagant claims go unchallenged, as is clear in Cavalcanti’s satirical Guata Manetto, questa scrugnizza, which rejects the idea that the irreducible signifier of a woman’s body could engender grace that renews the heart and mind of those who receive it. The poetic trope raises anthropological and political questions: how does the experience of the donna angelicata as she moves through the city reflect the experience of medieval religious processions like those for Our Lady of Impruneta in Florence, whose miracles seem to have occurred while she was processing? How does the spiritual leveling or elevation of all those who witness the lady become a counterpoint to traditional social hierarchy? How does a lady of such virtue implicitly redefine the citizen, or for that matter, the city? More generally, how does this trope change the role of the poet / lover and the praise of the lady?
Karina F. Attar
Passion, Procession, and the People: An Interdisciplinary Panel
Schneider 1255
The panel explores the phenomenology of the lady walking among the people of the city, the street serving as the public theater that reveals the extraordinary virtue of the donna angelicata. Deeply personal and impersonal, the trope is local but translated into the universal. Initiated by Guinizelli in his sonnet Io voglio del ver la mia donna laudare, the lady who passes through the people of the city opens the poetry of the Dolce stil nuovo to explore new philosophical and spiritual insights, from the experience of inscrutability and ineffability in the presence of the “donna-dea” in Cavalcanti’s Chi è questa che ven ch’ogn’om la mira, to the “sospiro” in Dante’s Tanto gentile e tanto onesta pare, from which a congregation seems to issue forth. Nor do such extravagant claims go unchallenged, as is clear in Cavalcanti’s satirical Guata Manetto, questa scrugnizza, which rejects the idea that the irreducible signifier of a woman’s body could engender grace that renews the heart and mind of those who receive it. The poetic trope raises anthropological and political questions: how does the experience of the donna angelicata as she moves through the city reflect the experience of medieval religious processions like those for Our Lady of Impruneta in Florence, whose miracles seem to have occurred while she was processing? How does the spiritual leveling or elevation of all those who witness the lady become a counterpoint to traditional social hierarchy? How does a lady of such virtue implicitly redefine the citizen, or for that matter, the city? More generally, how does this trope change the role of the poet / lover and the praise of the lady?
Karina F. Attar