Dante and the "Roman de la Rose": An investigation into the vernacular narrative context of the "Commedia" 9783111329024, 3484521848, 9783484521841

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BEIHEFTE ZUR ZEITSCHRIFT FÜR ROMANISCHE PHILOLOGIE B E G R Ü N D E T VON GUSTAV G R Ö B E R F O R T G E F Ü H R T VON WALTHER VON W A R T B U R G H E R A U S G E G E B E N VON K U R T B A L D I N G E R

BAND 184

E A R L JEFFREY R I C H A R D S

Dante and the «Roman de la Rose» An Investigation into the Vernacular Narrative Context of the «Commedia»

MAX NIEMEYER V E R L A G T Ü B I N G E N 1981

for Ingrid

CIP-Kurztitelaofnahme der Deutschen Bibliothek Richards, Earl Jeffrey: Dante and the «Roman de la Rose» : An Investigation into the Vernacular Narrative Context of the «Commedia» / Earl Jeffrey Richards. - Tübingen : Niemeyer, 1981. (Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie ; Bd. 184) ISBN 3-484-52184-8 NE: Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie / Beihefte ISBN 3-484-52184-8 ISSN 0084-5396 © Max Niemeyer Verlag Tübingen 1981 Alle Rechte vorbehalten. Ohne ausdrückliche Genehmigung des Verlages ist es auch nicht gestattet, dieses Buch oder Teile daraus auf photomechanischem Wege zu vervielfältigen. Printed in Germany. Satz und Druck: Maisch + Queck, Gerlingen. Einband: Heinr. Koch, Tübingen.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

VII

Introduction

1

Chapter One: The Emergence of Italian as a Literary Language: The Problem of the Fiore and the Influence of the Roman de la Rose

5

Chapter Two: The Translatio Topos and Dante

42

Chapter Three: Textual Parallelism between the Rose and the Commedia 71 Conclusion

106

Bibliography of Works Cited

109

V

Acknowledgements

This monograph represents a thorough reworking of my 1978 Princeton dissertation, Dante's «Commedia» and Its Vernacular Narrative Context. The appearance of several important Studie? since then, including Luigi Vanossi's Dante e il «Roman de la Rose»: Saggio sul «Fiore», (Florence, 1979) and PierreYves Badel's Le «Roman de la Rose» au XIV siicle, (Paris, 1980), prompted me to revise my earlier results for publication here. I would like to take this occasion to thank Professor Alan Deyermond of Westfield College, University of London, Professor Lea Ritter-Santini of the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, and Professor Kurt Baldinger, editor of the Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie, for their help and encouragement. E. J. Richards Münster i. W., January 1981

VII

Ac etiam rogo quosque legentes ut errores corrigant, defectus suppleant; nam difficile puto in tanta curiositate me omnia punctatim recitare potuisse: sectando Augustinum dicentem: talis sum in scriptis aliorum, quales volo esse intellectores meorum. Pietro di Dante

Introduction

Recent scholarly discussion of the relationship between the Roman de la Rose and the Commedia has been strongly influenced by Gianfranco Contini's arguments in favor of Dante's authorship of the Fiore, as for example Luigi Vanossi's 1979 monograph Dante e il«Roman de la Rose»: Saggio sul «Fiore». I propose to re-examine the problems which have been raised and to redirect critical inquiry along some new, and, I hope, promising lines. The issues involved here are extremely complex and need redefining. The facts are such as to call for a re-evaluation of traditional 'source studies'. For example, no one knows whether Dante even read the Rose, when he might have read it, or in what ways he might have reacted to it at different times in his literary career. A careful philological reconstruction of what little documentary evidence is available to us is required in order to reformulate more accurately the context of literary composition in the vernacular applicable to Dante. The principal documents include the Rose and the Commedia themselves, Dante's other works, particularly the Vita nuova, Convivio and especially De vulgari eloquentia (=DVE), the Italian translation of the Rose called the Fiore by its modern editors, and other Italian (= It.) narrative works composed in the same presumptive setting in which Dante himself worked (e.g., Brunetto Latini's Tesoretto). It is difficult to know which compositions, either Latin or vernacular, Dante might have read because library catalogues from the period of Dante's career do not exist. Nevertheless, It. library catalogues which date from slightly later than Dante may be helpful in reconstructing what vernacular works might have been circulating then in northern Italy; some of these might contain indications concerning the overall reception of both Old French (= O.F.) and Provengal (= Pr.) works which, in turn, might have some bearing on how Dante might have read the Rose. Positivistic source studies must be supplemented with other kinds of philological investigation. Concomitantly, while one can never hope for utterly certain results, one can nevertheless present reasonably plausible arguments provided that one never forgets their plausibility. With these difficulties in mind, any investigation of the various problems must at the same time be rigorously textually immanent. 'Interpretation' must take second place to critical discussion. On the basis of my reading of the evidence, I would prefer to believe that the Commedia is complementary to the Rose rather than antagonistic toward it. I do not find the arguments advanced 1

by Contini and Vanossi in favor of Dante's authorship of the Fiore to be persuasive, but I have tried to separate this judgment from my evaluation of the pertinent documents themselves. My first chapter re-examines the discussions regarding the attribution of the Fiore to Dante. Hitherto the participants in this debate have paid very little attention to the historical and linguistic context governing the literary exchanges between France and northern Italy in the late 13th century. Reconsidering the Fiore in this context should help lead to more productive insights both into the emergence of It. as a literary language and into the relationship between Dante's consciousness of vernacular eloquence and the peculiar impact of the Rose in northern Italy at this time. Strictly speaking, none of the evidence in this chapter is really new; I attempt, rather, to reorganize the available evidence in a more cogent way. The Fiore reflects, as does the slightly earlier Tesoretto, the impact which the Rose must have had on northern It. poets of the late 13th century. The Fiore is an instructive example of one of the earliest attempts at extended narration in It. The Fiore, the Tesoretto, and, to a lesser degree, the Intelligenza, aid in reconstructing the northern It. literary climate immediately prior to Dante. However these works may be judged aesthetically is secondary to their literary historical significance, since they set the stage for the composition of the crucially important DVE. DVE responds to many of the vernacular literary movements in northern Italy in the first years of the 14th century. While no specific narrative works are mentioned there, DVE articulates the theoretical basis for extended vernacular composition. Consequently, it is perhaps the most important touchstone for understanding the importance Dante himself attributes to vernacular narrative. Scholars have tended to neglect this relationship. From these matters I go on to examine the Rose's overall reception in northern Italy, and possible impact on Dante, in terms of the values of the translatio topos ascertained independently of the testimony provided by DVE. The conclusions reached in the first chapter and based in large measure on evidence other than DVE will be seen in the second chapter to 'dovetail' with what DVE explicitly says. This 'dovetailing' is quite natural since early It. narratives pave the way for the theoretical observations of DVE. The second chapter examines Dante's consciousness of the translatio topos in O.F. literature. Dante's remarks in DVE l.x.2 provide the point of departure. Here Dante refers to various kinds of works, a statement often interpreted as an exhaustive catalogue of Dante's knowledge of O. F. literature. A re-examination of this claim will show its shortcomings. The special role of the translatio topos in those O.F. texts to which Dante alludes is then discussed. In these works the translatio topos represents a process whereby the auctores were 're-authenticated' in a vernacular literary context. The values of the translatio topos oppose the stasis imposed on literary expression by gramatica. Contemporary poets become the auctores for subsequent generations, when they will themselves presumably become models for future imitation. A notion of 2

continuity arises which reconciles the existential immediacy of the vernacular with the learnedness of gramatica, and thereby unites poetic activity through space and time. Dante's views of the translatio topos and gramatica constitute a revalorization of the auctores in a late 13th-century environment within which the auctores had come under increasing attack, particularly in Italy, from such rhetoricians as Boncompagno da Signa. In the translatio topos Dante could find the means to recuperate the poetic achievement of the auctores and, as well, to develop It. into an 'illustrious vernacular'. Dante's articulation and elaboration of the relationship of vernacular poets to the auctores demonstrate important affinities to the translatio topos as this concept had been received in the O.F. canon, particularly in the Rose. These affinities hardly suffice to prove that Dante depends directly on the Rose for his notion of the translatio topos but do show that, in the Commedia, Dante consciously made use of the kinds of narrative possibilities implicit in the translatio topos which the Rose so clearly exploits. One can usefully speak of a poetological parallel between the Rose and the Commedia so that the question of 'direct source' - which requires documentation unavailable to us - is, in practical terms, secondary to the consideration of how the Rose and the Commedia reflect similar values of literary creation and of what this fact might mean. Literary historical research nevertheless does confirm the unique importance of the Rose both as emblem and transmitter of these values in northern Italy during Dante's career. The first and second chapters help to demonstrate that the translatio topos aids in understanding the Rose and that at the same time this topos is important for understanding the vernacular context of the Commedia, so that the poetological values of the Rose might afford new insights into understanding the Commedia. The third chapter examines the possibility of direct textual connections between the Rose and the Commedia, and how such connections, if any, might be described. First, I review the history of attempts to find parallels between the Rose and the Commedia, starting with Christine de Pizan's remarks from 1402 in the Quarrel of the Rose and Laurent de Premierfait's enigmatic comparison, made around 1410. Until almost 1950, scholars had most often approached the question in terms of the history of the influence of It. literature on Fr. Renaissance writers or in the arguments over the attribution of the Fiore. Though not uninteresting in themselves, these concerns did not lead very far. One might begin with the far more modest and concrete task of assembling textual reminiscences. I therefore discuss, in some detail, several instances of textual parallelism, some of which have already been proposed by scholars and others which are presented here for the first time. The strengths and limitations of each parallelism are investigated. The borrowings all come in roughly the last third of the poem and might, consequently, represent a deliberate attempt by Dante to connect the Commedia to the O.F. vernacular tradition which previously had culminated in the Rose. Given the controversial nature of the question I separate my discussion of the textual reminiscences themselves from their possible implications. One can 3

then attempt to determine, on the one hand, whether Dante's 'borrowings' from the Rose reflect a systematic integration of part of the organization of the Rose into that of the Commedia, and, on the other hand, the nature of the affinities stemming from both poems' elaboration of the values of the translatio topos. On the basis of these borrowings I would suggest that at the latest Dante read the Rose after having completed almost two-thirds of the Commedia. This conclusion does not mean that Dante could not have read the Rose before this time, only that the Rose's presence in the Commedia is more demonstrably apparent in the last part of the Commedia. Whether these conclusions are deemed plausible, I hope to have demonstrated how understanding the vernacular romance context, as defined here, enhances our reading of the Commedia. Such a 'by-product' of this investigation is as important as the other conclusions themselves reached here.

4

Chapter One

The Emergence of Italian as a Literary Language: The Problem of the Fiore and the Influence of the Roman de la Rose

In Italy during the 13th and early 14th centuries, Latin, O. F. and Pr. enjoyed far greater prestige than It. as languages of commerce, law and poetic composition. It. emerged as a literary language, beginning with the scuola siciliana, in part as a reaction to the examples set by the langue d'oi'l and the langue d'oc (terms first employed together in a systematic fashion by Dante himself 1 ) as vehicles of literary activity in place of Latin (which Dante prefers to treat as a 'secondary' form of speech which he calls gramatica2). There is little reliable documentation for reconstructing the linguistic climate of this period. Most surviving MSS of vernacular works composed from 1200 to 1350 which could have circulated in Italy survive in transcriptions from the second half of the 14th century or later. The complicated task of reconstruction entails a painstak1

2

Bodo Müller (in: Dante und die sprachliche Gliederung Frankreichs, Studien zu Dante, Festschrift für Rudolf Palgen, ed. by Klaus Lichem and Hans Joachim Simon, [Graz, 1971], pp. 129f.) documents the earliest occurences of lingua oc and lingua oil. DVE seems to follow a vernacular usage current in the late 13th century in designating Pr. according to its use of oc as an affirmative. At the same time Dante's systematization of the ydioma tripharium in DVE is a first: the designation of lingua oil is not found in Fr. sources until the mid-14th century. Dante ist thus one of the earliest and most sensitive observers of Romance vernacular literature. P. V. Mengaldo discussed the variety of meanings of gramatica in Dante's works: «Nella comparazione tra le died scienze e i died deli che D. svolge in Cv. II.xiii.7ss., la Gramatica, prima tra le sdenze del Trivio e del Quadrivio (e cfr. la prim' arte di Pd. xii. 138), έ paragonata al primo delo, quello della Luna (§§ 8-9). έ l'unico caso in cui g. έ sicuramente usato da D. in un senso vicino a quello ρίύ comune anticamente e modemamente, do£ di "sdenza della lingua" in genere, poichi nella sua giurisdizione sono compresi anche i vocabuli, oltre alle declinazioni e construzioni (e cfr. Cv.II.xi.9 construzione, la quale si pertiene a li gramatici). Negli altri casi in cui il termine ricorre, tutti appartenenti al Convivio e al De vulg. Eloq., il suo significato έ diverso, αοέ di "lingua di cultura regolata e convenzionale (artifidale)", in contrapposto all' idioma spontaneo e naturale, il volgare», (Enciclopedia dantesca, v.Ill, p. 259). The affinity of 'sdence of language' to "artifidal, regulated language" is very close: the former makes explidt the prindples informing the latter. For the purposes of discussion here, gramatica will most often be used in its meaning in DVE of locutio secundaria inalterabilis artificialis, that form of speech in which the auctores, the poetae regulati (or reguläres, Dante uses both adjectives, an interesting shift of emphasis), as well as the Scholastic philosophers, composed their works. Latin represents a form of gramatica for Dante, but it is not the only kind of 'artifidal speech' with which he is acquainted, (cf. la gramatica greca of Cv.I.xi.14). Throughout his career Dante tried to infuse the learnedness of gramatica into the vernacular. 5

ingly slow untangling of the evidence available. A clarification of the vernacular context for literary composition in Italy in the 13th and early 14th centuries can supply the setting from which Dante's work emerged. The penetration of the langue d'o'il and the langue d'oc, terms which connote their primarily literary rather than nationalistic or dynastic significance, can be ascertained first, through an examination of lexical borrowings from O.F. and Pr. into It.; second, from codicological evidence for the presence of MSS of O. F. and Pr. works in Italy at this time; and finally, from examples of the influence of O. F. and Pr. literature on certain It. writers of this period. This investigation can only be suggestive rather than exhaustive. A reconstruction of the importance of O. F. and Pr. can then be compared to what Dante says about the problem of vernacular eloquence. This comparison permits us to reconstruct the literary climate independently of Dante's perception of it and then to correlate this reconstruction with Dante's remarks on the literary resources of the different vernaculars making up the tripharium ydioma in order to ascertain the influence of O.F. and Pr. on the Commedia. Lexical borrowings from Pr. and O. F. into 13th-century It. are not wholly independent of one another. The same audience which read and spoke the one language often read and spoke the other. Initially, Proven^alisms and Gallicisms were probably both exclusively of a literary nature. The subjugation of southern France during the Albigensian Crusade and the creation of a Norman (and French-speaking) kingdom of Sicily and Naples meant that the pattern of O.F. and Pr. penetration in Italy bifurcated drastically early in the 13th century. The classic studies of O. F. influence in Italy were made by Paul Meyer in 19033, Reto Bezzola in 19254, and by T.E. Hope in 1971 and 19735. Bezzola noted two separate phenomena whose interrelationship needs to be stressed. 3

4

5

Paul Meyer, De l'expansion de la langue frangaise en Italie pendant le Moyen Age, Atti del Congresso Internazionale di Scienze Storiche, Roma, 1903, (Rome, 1904), v.IV, pp. 61-104. Reto Bezzola, Abbozzo di una storia dei gallicismi italiani nei primi secoli, (750-1300), Saggio storico-linguistico, (Heidelberg, 1925). T.E. Hope, Lexical Borrowings in the Romance Languages, A Critical Study of Italianisms in French and Gallicisms in Italian from 1100 to 1900, (New York, 1971), 2 vols.; Gallicisms in Dante's «Divina Commedia»: A Stylistic Problem? in: Studies in Medieval Literature and Languages in memory of Frederick Whitehead, ed. by W. Rothwell et al, (New York, 1973), pp. 153-72. See Yakov Malkiel's review of Hope's Lexical Borrowings in: Language 51 (1975), pp. 962-976. Besides these works, one should mention Arturo Farinelli, Dante e la Francia dall' etä media al secolo di Voltaire, (Milan, 1908), which is of little use in the discussion here because of its superficial treatment of the importance of the Rose in Italy and its refusal to consider any parallel between the Rosa mistica of Paradiso and «la rosa profana, colta dopo lunghi stenti nel giardino di voluttä». For background, of interest are: Vincenzo de Bartholomaeis, La poesia provenzale in Italia ne' secoli XII e XIII, and Amos Parducci, Dante e i trovatori, in: Provenza e Italia, Studi, ed. by V. Crescini, (Florence, 1930), pp.3-95; P.M. Letizia Rizzo, Influssi provenzali e francesi sulla lingua della scuola poetica siciliana, Convivio (1949), pp.740-748, and Elementi

6

First, Ο. F. offered It. a solution for the problem of the relation of the vernacular to Latin: In Francia, dove il latino opponeva ben minor resistenza, il volgare, splendido simbolo (...) della volgarizzazione dei nuovi valori acquistati colla prima sintesi spirituale e colturale, andava sviluppandosi, diffondendosi a pari passi colla nuova civiltä, - il volgare d'ltalia restava condannato per lunghi secoli all'uso puramente quotidiano, e quando finalmente ruisd a rompere i suoi legami, ebbe a combattere una lotta ben piü aspra del francese (...) L'influsso francese in Italia ρίύ che diretto fu indiretto: non suscitö una civiltä simile a quella francese, ma diede la spinta alia creazione di un mondo da essa ben diverso6. For a variety of historical, linguistic and literary reasons, the notion of translatio studii had taken hold in France so that the development of a vernacular literature was far more advanced there than in Italy. The phonetic and lexical proximity of It. to Latin discouraged It. vernacular composition. Pr. and O.F. literature provided It. with its first examples for imitation. Second, Bezzola noted a sudden decline of O.F. influence in the early 14th century. Besides furnishing an example for It. vernacular literature, O.F. provoked a counter-reaction to its own influence, a response linked to the emergence of an illustrious It. vernacular which it had itself strongly influenced: La civiltä francese vi [i.e., in Italia] fu accolta festosamente e vi ebbe un gran successo, forse maggiore di quello che aveva avuto altrove, ma il suo influsso diretto fu puramente passeggero. Un secolo e mezzo dopo, gli influssi francesi giunti al colmo, sul finire del Trecento, furono cancellati quasi completamente7. The O. F. tradition afforded an example of the mediation between Latmity and the vernacular and provided the theoretical basis for elevating It. to the status of a literary language in place of Latin, O.F. or Pr. The distance between the

6 7

francesi nella lingua deipoeti siciliani della 'Magna Curia', Bollettino, Centro di Studi filologici e linguistici siciliani, 1 (1953), pp. 115-130; 2 (1954), pp.93-151 and Ignazio Baldelli, Dante e i poeti fiorentini del Duecento, (Florence, 1968); Henri Hauvette, La France et la Provence dans l'aeuvre de Dante, (Paris, 1929), is misleading. Hauvette considered the various problems from a predominately historical, rather than a philological, or even a literary historical, point of view. He summarizes earlier discussion without bringing any new insights to the problems which he considers, as e.g., how valid is the evidence for Dante's having visited Paris? Can allusions in the Commedia be used to demonstrate Dante's personal acquaintance with France? Hauvette also summarizes the Fiore argument up to his time, but ends by saying, «la question reste ouverte». Two essays in Storia della Cultura veneta, Dalle origini al Trecento, ed. Gianfranco Folena (Vicenza, 1976), are of value. In 11 francese come lingua letteraria e il franco-lombardo, pp. 563-589, Lorenzo Renzi provides an excellent survey of O. F. literature in Italy in general without discussing the problem of the Fiore. Renzi has contributed several important articles to the Enciclopedia dantesca reading O.F. works. In Primi monumenti del volgare, pp.602-632, Anna Lomazi treats the problems of an It. literary vernacular and literary consciousness in the vernacular prior to Dante. Lomazzi takes her cue from Giuseppe Vidossi's essay, L'ltalia dialettaleflnoa Dante, in: Le Origini, Testi latini, provenzali e franco-italiani, ed. by A. Viscardi et al., (Milan, 1956), pp.xxxiii-lxxi. Bezzola, op. cit., pp.269, 266. Ibid., p.266. 7

auctores and vernacular literature constituted probably the most recurrent problem in the topos of translatio studii. The decline in the importance of O. F. seems to correspond closely with the ascendance and increased dignity of the It. vernacular. Bezzola located the It. counter-reaction to O.F. chiefly in Petrarch; as for Dante, the 'struggle' against French influence lay in the future. With this historical background in mind, one can explore the question of the different generations of Proven;alisms and Gallicisms in It. and their stylistic and poetic implications. Provengalisms were borrowed into It. primarily as literary expressions, and exerted initially greater influence than Gallicisms, for It. poets turned first to lyrical compositions, imitating the troubadours, rather than to tile narrative forms more readily associated with O.F. (as, e.g., later works like the Entrie d'Espagne by an anonymous Paduan, or Rusticiano da Pisa's compilation [ca. 1280] of the Arthurian corpus). In discussing Provengalisms, Bezzola noted briefly: Delle voci di lirica proveniente dal proveozale noi daremo qui una scelta che poträ dare un'idea del loro carattere tanto formale quanto significativo, come anche del modo col quale si introdussero in italiano. Le voci veramente caratteristiche nel vocabolario della poesia provenzaleggiante restarono strettamente confinate alia lirica aulica; in gran parte non furono usate nella lingua parlata, probabilmente nemmeno dai poeti che le adoperavano in poesia8.

Gianfranco Folena distinguished three generations of Proven^alisms on the basis of the codicological evidence of chansonnier D9. While one can chronologically differentiate three generations of Pr. poets popular in Italy, there are not three corresponding generations of lexical borrowings. The greater part of the codification of Pr. lyric, as evidenced in the assembling of the chansonniers, took place in Italy; in other words, the It. audience of Pr. was highly sensitive to the values inherent within the lyrical tradition it had received. Genetically, Pr. lyric had little room for innovation, so that the rigidity of lyrical conventions gave way to the compositions of the prose vidas and razosl0. In a similar movement toward the codification of Pr., the Donatz proensals of Uc Faidit was composed at the request of two It. noblemen at the court of Emperor Frederick II, Giacomo di Mora and Coraduccio di Sterleto, a Pr. work written in Italy for It. readers11. Pr. literature therefore was in large measure taken to its limits by its It. audience. Most Provengalisms began to disappear, particularly forms ending in -anza, in the 14th century, without ever having lost their literary flavor. 8 9

10

11

Ibid., p.220. Gianfranco Folena, Tradizione e cultura trobadorica nelle corti e nelle cittä venete, Storia della Cultura veneta, Dalle origini al Trecento, ed. by Gianfranco Folena, (Vicenza, 1976), p. 458. See Elizabeth R. Wilson, The Lyrics of Old Provengal Prose: Generic Movements of Space and Time in the vidas and razos, (Diss. Princeton, 1977). The Donatz Proesals of Uc Faidit, ed. by John Henry Marshall, (London, 1969), pp.62-65.

8

Gallicisms had a different fortune in Italian. Initially Gallicisms seem, like Proven$alisms, to have been chiefly literary. Three stylistic contexts for Gallicisms are distinguishable among It. poets: a 'literary', or precious, context in the scuola siciliana; an experimental context in the Fiore; and a more conservative, though simultaneously innovative, 'linguistically realistic' context in the Commedia. Gallicisms in the two canzoni of Guido delle Colonne (fl. 1257-1277) which Dante cites in DVE (I.xxi.2, II.v.4, II.vi.6) seem fundamentally literary. Mario Marti described their stylistic implications: «una ricchezza impensata di Gallicismi contribuisce a dare a tutto il componimento una tessitura linguistica estremamente preziosa e raffinata (...) e come sospesa al di sopra e al di fuori della realtä idiomatica»12. Brunetto Latini's use of Gallicisms in the Tesoretto (traditionally dated ca. 1262-1266, but see below for the difficulties here) resembles to a large degree that of Guido, given the learned, didactic nature of his work. The question of Gallicisms in the Fiore is not simple. Parodi, editing the text in 1922, spoke of «quel'orgia di sfacciati francesismi» (p.xi). Indeed V.Biagi suggested in 1921 that there were more Provengalisms than Gallicisms in the Fiore (which he then used to argue for the Flore's having inspired Jean de Meung's continuation of Guillaume de Lorris)13. The Tuscan features of the diction of the Fiore, however, point to its preceding the Commedia, as Bernhard Langheinrich pointed out in 1934: Parodis Behauptung, die Sprache des Fiore sei archaischer als die Dantes, findet durch verschiedene dieser Merkmale (e-Auslaut in der l.Pers. Sing, des Konj. Imperf., das häufige Vorkommen von e[o], me[o] u.a.) ihre Bestätigung14.

The diction of the Fiore indicates a date of composition relatively soon after the Rose's completion (ca.1280). Such a dating concurs with its fundamentally 12 13

14

Mario Marti, Con Dante fra ipoeti del suo tempo, (Lecce, 1971), p. 35. Vincenzo Biagi, II «Fiore», il «Roman de la Rose» e Dante, Annali delle Universitä toscane 40 [n.s. 6] (1921), fasc.3, pp.61-144. Bernhard Langheinrich, Sprachliche Untersuchung zur Frage der Verfasserschaft Dantes am «Fiore», Deutsches Dante-Jahrbuch 19 [n.F. 10] (1937), p.190. Parodi's and Langheinrich's conclusions have found more recent support in the work of Mario Muner. Writing in Perchi il «Fiore» non pud essere di Dante (e a chi invece potrebbe attribuirsi), Motivi per la difesa della cultura 7 (1969), pp. 88-105 and in La patemitä brunettiana del «Fiore» e del «Detto d'Amore», Motivi per la difesa della cultura 9 (1971), pp. 274-320, articles which have been virtually ignored in the subsequent scholarly discussion, Muner has argued strongly for attributing the Fiore and Detto d'Amore to Brunetto an the basis of internal evidence. Marshalling an impressive and carefully drawn-up body of proofs, Muner pointed to close syntactial, rhetorical, graphical, lexical and generic affinities between the Fiore, the Detto d'Amore and Brunette's It. verse works. The presence of Brunetto in the Detto d'Amore has long attracted scholarly attention. What Muner convincingly demonstrated is that the Fiore is contemporary to the composition of Brunetto's It. verse works, that is, the Fiore was composed in all likelihood in the 1280's. Unfortunately, a definitive attribution of the Fiore to Brunetto suffers from the same problems as an attribution to Dante - there is simply no 'hard' evidence. Muner nevertheless should be commended for the philological refinement of his arguments.

9

experimental and exploratory use of Gallicisms. The clash between the Florentine diction found in the Fiore and the Gallicisms used there helps elucidate the role that the Fiore played in the development of a more lexically controlled poetic diction in It. The 'chastized' Gallicisms of the Commedia might be viewed as a correction of the aesthetically disturbing Gallicisms of the Fiore. The problems involving lexical borrowings in the creation of an illustrious It. vernacular will be explored further when the question of Franco-Italian (= Fr.It.) is discussed below. Parodi was one of the first critics to discuss the poetic diction of the Commedia. He spoke of «i gallicismi, dei quali Dante fa invece un uso moderatissimo, assai piü moderato, che non dovessimo ragionevolmente aspettarci»15. As Parodi stressed, Dante's use of desinences deviates from the prevailing lyrical norms of his day, «Pare adunque che Dante, piuttosto che l'uso dei lirici, abbia seguito (...) l'uso toscano di poco piü che una generazione innanzi alia sua, attingendo in quel moderato arcaismo nobilitä e solennitä di linguaggio»16. Dante's use of Gallicisms is, as Hope points out, governed by a desire for «linguistic realism», whereas his use of Provensalisms was «in harmony with those of his contemporaries»17. This latter behavior was consistent with the literary norms of Dante's time, while his use of Gallicisms marked a clear break with the preciousness of his contemporaries. Dante's poetic diction, through its conservatism, resolves the anomalous juxtaposition of Florentine with the 'outrageous' Gallicisms in the Fiore. (Nor was the anomalous diction of the Fiore an isolated phenomenon considering the phenomenon of Fr.-It.) Hope emphasizes the combination of stylistic sensitivity and linguistic realism in Dante's Gallicisms. Dante wished to employ poetic diction which was 'realistic', or as he said in the Convivio, conoscente: It seems to me that the Gallicisms are part of the Italian language as Dante himself knew it, actually used within his own experience by a broad band of the social classes he himself was familiar with. During the 13th century the influence of France on Italy and of French on Italian remained of great moment, because of new contacts of the kind Dante himself was on occasions involved in and because of the working out of powerful linguistic influences already established, mainly Norman, which dated from previous centuries. It looks as if Dante was being deliberately realistic [when] he gave entrie to his borrowed words18.

The conservatism and deliberateness of Dante's Gallicisms reflect a conscious effort to exploit the poetic resources of the langue d'oil and a highly developed sensitivity to questions of poetic diction. Lexical borrowings delineate one aspect of the interaction among vernacular languages in northern Italy during the 13th and early 14th centuries. The 15

16 17 18

Ernesto Parodi, La rima e i vocaboli in rima nella «Divina Commedia», Bull. Soc. Dant. Ital. 3 (1896), p.93. Ibid., p. 126. Hope, op. cit. (1973), p. 159. Ibid., p. 170. 10

patterns of literary influence suggested by this brief examination of lexical borrowings is corroborated by codicological evidence, which provides an additional perspective on what Pr. and O. F. texts were actually being read in Italy during Dante's time. The pattern of MSS dissemination is not necessarily equivalent to the pattern of MSS survival nor to the literary impact of a particular work. There is a greater tendency to 'generations' and contamination in MSS traditions than in lexical borrowings. The conflation of written and oral diffusion of a particular work adds further complications. The survival of MSS of O.F. works in Italy was governed by three factors: first, the composition of cyclical MSS which made earlier single MSS obsolescent; second, anachronisms of literary taste among It. patrons ordering MSS; and third, the survival of luxury MSS - often rarely consulted - in the place of less ornate codices of more frequently read works. Very few MSS of any Pr. or O. F. text of any genre survive from before the second half of the 13th century. Oral diffusion can explain the scarcity of MSS of chansons de geste before this time; at the same time a comparable scarcity of MSS predominates for texts of a primarily written nature. As D'Arco Silvio Avalle commented: la costituzione verso la fine del XIII secolo e soprattutto nel XTV secolo di grandi manoscritti antologici ο ciclici raccoglienti alcuni le chansons de geste, altri i romanzi cortesi in couplets d'octosyllabes, altri ancora le opere edificanti ο religiose, e cosi via, fabliaux e racconti allegri, liriche cortesi ('canzoniere'), etc. etc., manoscritti che favorirono senza dubbio la progressiva distruzione dei codici piü antichi, oramai ritenuti senza alcun valore e superati, almeno nell'opinione del pubblico, da quei grossi volumi1'.

Moreover, the formation of cyclical MSS coincides historically with the prosification movement in O. F. literature. Rusticiano da Pisa, working in the 1270's, composed a prose compilation in O. F. of the Arthurian and Tristan materials, a codification of O.F. narrative paralleling the earlier codification of Pr. lyric by Italians. The prosification of the romans antiques and the romances of Chr6tien constitutes a complicated reaction to the translatio topos. The prosification movement coincided with the anachronism of literary taste found in It. courts: verse romances, unlike the chansons de geste, had no historical warrant. Their prosification endowed them with a truthfulness they otherwise lacked for some audiences. Moreover, the prosification movement appears especially pertinent for Dante because he insists on the anteriority of poetry over prose at the beginning of the second book of DVE. Dante probably had in mind the example of Guido delle Colonne, whose lyrical work Dante much admired but who translated Benoit's verse Roman de Troie into the Latin prose Historia destructions Troiae (a text whose success subsequently eclipsed Benoit's original work), a doubly anachronistic work for it marked a retreat both from the vernacular and from verse composition, all done in name of revealing a hitherto hidden truth. 19

D'Arco Silvio Avalle, La letteratura medievale in lingua d'oc nella sua tradizione manoscritta, (Turin, 1961), p. 54. 11

The surviving MSS tradition from Italy represents some anachronisms of literary taste. The popularity of Carolingian material around 1300 in Italy is partially anomalous, considering what contemporary poets in France, like Rutebeuf (who noted ironically and nostalgically, «Or remainent chansons de geste») or Jean de Meung, were attempting to do. Gianfranco Folena considered the Roland tradition in Italy to be a sporadic case of anachronism: [ci sono] casi eccezionali e sporadici di conservazione 'anacronista' di tradizkmi marginal, com' έ in un certo modo per la redazione marciana assonanzata della Chanson de Roland antico-francese (V4) localizzabile con ogni probabilitä a Treviso all' inizio del Trecento20. While Folena speaks of sporadic anachronism attributable to the marginal participation of It. audiences in the composition of literary works in O. F., it is not surprising that many surviving 14th-century It. MSS of O.F. works are often, though not exclusively, works not then in vogue in France. Meyer listed O.F. works of It. provenance without explaining their presence in terms of literary taste. Three of the seven remaniements of the Chanson de Roland were composed in Italy during Dante's lifetime: V7 is from around 1300, V4 from the first part of the 14th century, C from the end of the 13th century21. Five of sixteen surviving MSS of Aspremont were transcribed in Italy from the late 13th century onwards 22 . Paul Meyer listed other works from the matiire de France popular in Italy: Ogier le Danois23, Aliscans and Girart de Roussillon. Three of the nine surviving MSS of the Roman d'Eneas are of It. origin and represent a 20 21

22

23

Folena, op. cit., p. 456. Venice, San Marco fr. IV (V4) and fr. VII (V7), and Chäteauroux (C). Les Textes de la Chanson de Roland, Raoul Mortier, General Editor, (Paris, 1940-44), 10 vols., furnish descriptions of each of these codices: Mortier said of V7, «L'dcriture est une belle miniscule gothique assez ronde, trfcs courant dans les manuscrits de chansons de geste coptees en Italie ä la fin du ΧΠΡ ou au d6but du XIV1 Steele. Telle est l'dpoque ού fut 6crit ce manuscrit un peu plus ancien, croyons-nous, que celui de C» (v. V, p. 1). According to R. Barroux, «Le manuscrit V4 appartient ä un groupe bien connu. Au XTV* si&cle ont fleuri en Italie force copies des textes frangais de langue d'oil ou de langue d'oo (v. II, p.xix). C, if not necessarily of It. origin, was in the Gonzaga library catalogue of 1407 (item no. 51). Mortier commented, «Ce manuscrit appartient, ä notre avis, au groupe des copies dtablies, ä la fin du XIIF Steele, dans le midi de la France. Les ornements et grandes lettres initiales orndes et enlumindes, lourdes et sobres, se rencontrent d'ordinaire, soit dans les manuscrits du midi de la France, soit dans ceux de l'Italie du nord, ä la fin du XIIP Steele ou d6but du XIVe» (v. IV, p.viii). Paul Meyer, Fragment d'«Aspremont» conservi aux archives du Puy-de-D6me, suivi d'observations sur quelques manuscrits du mime poime, Romania 19 (1890), pp. 202-203. The five codices are: (1) Florence, Bibl. naz. cl. VII, no. 932,14th-15th. cent.; (2) Paris, Β. N. f. fr. 1598, fols. 1-52,14th cent., transcribed by one «Johannes de Bononia»; (3) Rome, Vat. 1360,13th cent.; Venice, Bibl. San Marcofir.IV, end of 13th cent.; and (5) Bibl. San Marco fr. VI, 14th cent. Pio Rajna discusses the considerable It. success of Ogier le Danois in: Uggeri il Danese nella letteratura romanzesca degl'Italiani, Romania 2 (1873), pp. 153-167; 3 (1874), pp.31-77; 4 (1875), pp. 398-436. 12

continuous tradition in Italy from the late 12th century24. Indeed, just as It. audiences of Pr. tended to receive those works in a codified, schematized format, the epigraph added to the oldest surviving Eneas MS by a late 12th century reader delineates the literary categories in the minds of an It. audience: Per vos donna vallenz cheu non ans dir ni non pos dir a vos ma desiranz (...) en am plus vos de bon cor lialmenz che Cliges non ama Fenices verament ne Floire Blancaflor ne Alexandre Soredamors25.

The Alexander cycle was especially popular in Italy; indeed, the important Venice MS of the Alexandre - a MS whose composition attempts to organize the Alexander material as a cycle - was transcribed in northern Italy during Dante's lifetime. Northern Italy is responsible for the most widespread survival of Pr. chansonniers: of the surviving ninety-five MSS, fifty-two are of It. provenance, ten of Catalan, fourteen of O. F. and nineteen of Pr. origin, none older than the middle of the 13th century26. The codicological evidence indicates that works which have survived in any substantial way in Italy were of a conservative nature. Correspondingly, works of an innovative nature might not have tended to be so widely transmitted, as for example the Rose, which was probably meant more for a university audience than a specifically courtly one. Surviving MSS often are luxury MSS whose very survival in part depended on their being in limited circulation. One of the outstanding anomalies of MSS dissemination is the case of the Rose: relatively few of the approximately 300 surviving MSS are luxury MSS, which indicates in part a diffusion of the text among non-courtly university circles. Moreover, as Langlois' study of Rose MSS often indicates, many surviving MSS (mostly undistinguished with some noteworthy exceptions) came from the lesser nobility: minor bishops or knights. Because only a handful of Rose MSS survive from the late 13th century (BN f.fr.378, 1559, 1569, 1573; Dijon, Bibl. Mun.526; Oxford, Bodl. Rawl. A446 and Turin, L.III.22), it is impossible to reconstruct accurately the Rose's early transmission to northern Italy. The Fiore, whose Tuscan diction and Gallicisms support a date of composition during the last two decades of the 13th century, must have been based on MS(S) of the Rose which have long since disappeared. Moreover, no library catalogues for vernacular literature 24

25

26

See Raymond Cormier, Gleanings on the Manuscript Tradition of the «Roman d'Eneas», Manuscripts 18 (1974), pp. 42ff. A (Laurenziana Plut, XLI, cod. 44, end of 12th, beginning of 13th cent.) and Β (Brit. Mus. Add. 14100, 14th cent.) are definitely Italian. D (B.N. f. fr.60,14th cent.) has It. miniatures. C (Brit. Mus. Add. 34100, end of 14th cent.) is an Anglo-Norman MS, but was transcribed for Henry de Spenser, awarded the bishopric of Norwich by Adrian V for having fought for the Papacy in Italy. It seems probable that this so-called 'Fighting Bishop of Norwich' (1370-1406) might have become familiar with the Eneas in Italy where it seems to have been particularly popular. Cited in Eneas, Texte critique, ed. by J. Salverda de Grave, Bibliotheca normannica, v. IV, (Halle a. S„ 1891), p.iii. Avalle, op. cit., pp. 44-45. 13

survive for Italy before that of the Gonzaga family, completed in 140727, from which many of the French codices in the Biblioteca San Marco in Venice come. Francis Avril noted to this writer: En ce qui concerne la diffusion du Roman de la Rose en Italie pour la p£riode de 1290 k 1320, je ne puis que vous dire (...) que je ne connais aucun exemple de Roman de la Rose copid et/ou enlumind en Italie durant cette piriode. Je serais tout de m£me ötonnd que cette ceuvre n'ait que circul6 (au moins en copies d'origine fran^aise) dans un milieu aussi francisi que la Cour de Naples28.

While it is not possible to establish whether O.F. vernacular works were circulating in the Angevin kingdom of Naples29, as Francois Avril noted, it 27

28 29

Following are the citations for the earliest catalogues of northern It. libraries which possessed O.F. works: 1407: W. Braghirolli, P. Meyer and G. Paris, Les Manuscrits frangais des Gonzague, Romania 9 (1880), pp.497-514. This catalogue was compiled in 1407 at the death of Francesco Gonzaga, and includes sixty-seven O.F. codices. G. Paris noted, «A Mantoue comme ä Ferrare [i.e., the library of the Estensi] les livres frangais constituent, aprfes les livres latins, le fond des biblioth£ques princiöres. Dans les deux collections nous retrouvons les memes groupes: quelques livres de thiologie, de morale, d'histoire et de science, mais surtout des romans de chevalerie, les uns, en prose, sur le Saint Graal et la Table Ronde, les autres, en laisses monorimes, sur Charlemagne et ses guerriers» [500], Most of these codices have subsequently disappeared. Francesco Novati's study of them remains invaluable: I codici francesi dei Gonzaga, Attraverso il medio evo, Studi e ricerche, (Bari, 1905), pp. 257-326, which expands upon his earlier discussion, I codici francesi de' Gonzaga secondo nuovi documenti, Romania 19 (1890), pp. 160-200. 1426: Antoine Thomas, Les Manuscrits frangais et provengaux des Dues de Milan au chäteau de Pavie, Romania 40 (1911), pp.571-609. This catalogue contains references to ninety-three codices of O.F. works, including one of the Rose, (not mentioned in Langlois' discussion of «Manuscrits dont le domicile actuel est inconnu», Les Manuscrits du «Roman de la Rose», Description et Classement, [Paris, 1910], pp. 199-212): «no. 76 (= 900) - Liber unus in gallico, qui dicitur Romanus de la Rosa, pulcerrimus, qui incipit: Maintes gens dient que en songes, et finitur: atant fu yors et ie mesvele, cum assidibus et copertura strazata corii albi sive viridis, et est in versibus ad duos colognellos». Thomas noted, «[ce codex] manque dans l'inventaire de 1459». 1437: Pio Rajna, Ricordi di codici francesi posseduti dagli Estensi nel secolo XV, Romania 2 (1873), pp. 49-58. The 1437 inventory contains fifty-three O. F. works; the 1488 inventory contains fifty-nine, including a reference to a Rose MS which has since disappeared. Rajna gives the following citation, which Langlois notes (p. 205), »[le] Roman dala Roxa, in francexe, in membrana, coverto de chore roso» (p.52). Letter of March 17, 1978. Cf. Paul Durrieu, Les Archives angevines de Naples, £tude sur les registres du roi Charles Γ (1265-1285), Paris, 1886-87, 2 vols.; and Documents en frangais des archives angevines de Naples, (Rigne de Charles Γ), transcrits par P. Durrieu et A. de Brouard, publi6 par A. de Brouard: v. 1, Les Mandements aux trisoriers, Paris, 1933; v.2, Les comptes des trisoriers, Paris, 1935. Cornelia C. Coulter published archival material and found entries dealing with the copying and purchase of manuscripts. She summarized her findings: «About one hundred books are listed in the records of 1280-1340, most of them in the reign of Robert the Wise (1309-1343). The titles include devotional and liturgical books, Biblical texts and theological

14

would indeed be surprising if the Rose were diffused only in this environment. From the beginning of the 13th century throughout the first half of the 14th century, French book production took place in the northern area of France, roughly corresponding to Picardy. Picard influences in the copying of O.F. texts is detectable in both northern Italy and the Angevin kingdom of Naples. As Francis Avril continued in his letter: Les traces picardes (...) relevdes dans les copies italiennes d'oeuvres franchises s'expliquent, me semble-t-il, par la place prdponderante occup6e par la librairie picarde (ce terme englobant toute la production des provinces septentrionales de la France) dans la diffusion des textes fransais depuis au moins la premiere moitid du X m e sifecle jusqu'ä la premiere moitid du si£cle suivant. L'existence de modules picards peut done tr6s bien rendre compte de la prdsence de picardismes dans les copies de textes fran^ais faites en Italie. La bibliothdque des dues de Milan possέdait au moins deux manuscrits frangais d'origine picarde: le ms. frangais 95 de la Biblioth&que Nationale, un Robert de Boron de la rögion Saint-Omer-Th6rouanne, et le Brunet Latin, ms. frangais 1110 de la Biblioth^que Nationale, offert par le prfitre Jean-Galias Visconti ä sa mdre Blanche de Savoie (ce dernier manuscrit certainement exdcutö ä Arras ä la fin du ΧΠΙ' sifecle). Une autre explication de ces picardismes pourrait 6tre aussi l'origine picarde de certains copistes travaillant en Italie. Cela est certain ä Naples ού l'on sait qu'un certain Jean d'Ypres travaillait (au ddbut du XTV* stecle?) au service des rois Angevins. J'ai 6tudi6 naguöre un manuscrit des Faits des Romains (Β.Ν., frangais 295) dont j'ai montr6 qu'il avait 6t6 enlumind ä Naples par un enlumineur de formation picarde dont on retrouve la main dans divers autres manuscrits d'origine napolitaine. Ce qui est intdressant dans le cas de ce manuscrit, e'est que deux copistes sont intervenus, le second qui a copi6 les ff. 118 ä 665, dtant indubitablement d'origine frangaise30.

Such evidence makes one suspect that there was at least some small measure of uniformity in the diffusion of O.F. manuscripts throughout all of Italy. Part of Dante's characterization of O.F. literature as «Troianorum Romanorumque gesta» might in fact reflect a 'Picard connection', for this allusion probably refers to the Histoire ancienne jusqu'ä Cisar, which was composed in the period 1223-1230 for the court of Roger TV, castellan of Lille. Paul Meyer's study of this work (Les Premiires compilations frangaises d'Histoire ancienne, Romania 14 [1885] pp. 1-81) lists several MSS of It. provenance: Brussels, Bibl. roy. 10168-72, «icrit ä Rome en 1293»; Oxford, Bodleian, Canonici misc. 450, «6crit par Benedetto de V6rone et achevö le Ier avril 1384»; Paris, B.N. fr.293, «6criture italienne, X V sifccle»; B.N. fr.295 discussed above by M.Avril; and B.N. fr.23082, «6criture italienne, commencement du XIVC sifccle»; and Venice, San Marco, Cod. Gall. Ill, «commencement du XTVe Steele (...) ms. provenant des Gonzague, no. 12 du catalogue de 1407». This 'Picard connection' can be referred to the history of the Rose's transmission. Alfred Kuhn's study of illuminated Rose MSS, in spite of being dated and often

30

treatises, history, works on Canon Law, a number of scientific works, and a few classical texts», (The Library of the Angevin Kings at Naples, Transactions of the American Philological Society 75 [1944], p. 141). Utter of March 17, 1978.

15

hasty if not downright wrong in many of its characterizations of the significance of Rose iconography, does however point to generations in the Rose's diffusion. The early production of illuminated Rose codices was a northern Fr. phenomenon which did not shift south to Paris until the first half of the 14th century. «Im Norden Frankreichs in seinen Grundzügen schon festgelegt, gelangte der Illustrationszyklus in der ersten Hälfte des XIV. Jahrhunderts nach Paris»31. The Rose then may well have circulated in Italy with other O.F. works of Picard origin. Franceso Novati concluded regarding the transmission of the Rose in the 14th century (a possible reflection of the situation at the end of the 13th): II Roman de la Rose vien letto in Firenze per tutto il Trecento, ed ancora sulla fine di esso un notaio dabbene ne ricopia de' lunghi brani nelle pagine d'un suo manoscritto con quella devozione medesima con cui avrebbe atteso a far estratti dall' Arte d'amore d'Ovidio32.

As evidence of his first statement, Novati records the sale of a Rose MS apparently quite expensive - by the Compagnia di Orsanmichele in Florence on March 8, 1367 for «fiorini .ΙΠΙ. d'oro (...) un libro in franciescho chiamato Romanza della Rosa»33. The evidence for the second statement is found in Bandini's catalogue of the Laurenziana, a codex quoted as Gaddiana Reliq. 106, a late 14th-century paper MS containing both passages excerpted from the Rose which translated Ovid's Ars amatoria as well as It. translations of the Ars amatoria attributed to the son of Andrea Lancea («Andreae Lanciae filio tribuitur», though Novati says Andrea Lancia himself). Bandini's entry reads in part: In pag. 9.b.&pag. 10 quae vacuae relictae er ant, scriptae sunt Cantiones quaedam lingua Provinciali, quarum prima titulum habet: Difftnito Amoris edita a Magistro Iohanne Anglicho in Libro Ramantum rose. Inc. Amors est haine amoureuse&ij34.

Novati inspected the codex and could identify the excerpts from the Rose, found on fols. 9 and 10, as well as fol.28, which Bandini had described only as «Nonnulli versus item Gallici occurrant etiam in ultimo folio». The codicological evidence therefore suggests a modest circulation of the Rose in Florence during the 14th century. The Rose apparently circulated both in luxury manuscripts (as the 1425 Milan catalogue's note «pulcerrimus» indicates and which the 1367 price of four gold florins confirms) as well as in a non-luxury format, as the excerpting of the Rose by a Florentine notary in the late 14th century 31

32 33

34

Alfred Kuhn, Die Illustration des Rosenromans, Jahrbuch der kunsthistorischen Sammlungen [in Wien] des allerhöchsten Kaiserhauses 31 (1913), p. 63-64. Novati, op. cit. (1905), p.261. Francesco Carabellese, La Compagnia di Orsanmichele e il mercato di libri in Firenze nelsec. XIV, Archivio storico italiano, ser. 5, v. 16 (1895), pp. 267-273; the citation here is found on p. 269. Bibliotheca Leopoldiana Laurentiana, ed. by A.M. Bandini (Florence, 1792): Supplementum, II, cols. 119-120. 16

shows. Gadd. Reliq. 106 might be thought to emblematize the Rose's It. reception as a work which transposed and therefore continued Ovid. There is no guarantee that those catalogues which have survived are exhaustive. For example, even though Petrarch wrote to Guido Gonzaga sometime in the mid-14th century that he was sending him a copy (presumably) of the Rose which he sarcastically called brevis iste liber, the Gonzaga catalogue of 1407 mentions no such codex, (though Ciimpoli hypothesized that this MS was Bibl. San Marco App. MS Cod. VIE, which Langlois, however, identifies as a 15th-century work)35. Even if reliable catalogues for libraries were available, there would be no way to prove Dante used them. The codicological evidence, however, is clear in demonstrating that the reading tastes of It. audiences for whom O.F. and Pr. works were transcribed were not necessarily identical with those of It. poets using Gallicisms or Provensalisms. Henri Bresc examined the relationship between surviving codices and the social position of their owners for Sicily. Bresc's research allowed him to comment about social relationship after the middle of the 14th century, where he distinguished between book production in northern Italy which shows evidence of «les hens ötroits tissös entre les humanistes et les patriciens», whereas in Sicily, «le livre semble l'instrument priviMgid du professionnel de la culture»36. Of course the distribution of books among the privileged classes was not uniform. While Bresc's conclusions are not directly pertinent to Dante nor to the dissemination of O.F. works in Italy, his methodology accounts for the difficulties which arise in evaluating the surviving documentary evidence. The resurgence of interest in classical authors in the late 14th century probably had some general effect upon the composition of libraries. In Sicily the urban upper classes showed the greatest openness to new literary developments: 35

36

Langlois in Manuscrits discussed this codex sent by Petrarch, pp. 202-204, and the difficulties of dating this verse epistle, p. 203 η. 1. The claim that this MS is San Marco, App. MS Cod. Vin was put forward by Domenico Ciämpoli, 1 codici francesi delta R. Biblioteca nazionale di S. Marco in Venezia, (Venice, 1897), p. 222; see Langlois' description of this codex in Manuscrits, p. 193. Petrarch's letter to Guido Gonzaga will be considered in detail below in Chapter Two. This verse epistle (ΙΠ.30) has been assigned various dates. Ernest A. Wilkins summarized the different arguments: Diana Magrini argued for a date ca. 1350-53; Wilkins supported the date of ca. 1340, which C. Calcaterra also favored, (The «Epistolae Metricae» of Petrarch, A Manual, [Rome, 1956], p. 32). Enrico Bianchi commented (Le «Epistole Meiriche» del Petrarca, Annali della R. Scuola normale superiora di Pisa, ser. 2, vol. 9 [1940], pp. 251-266): «Cid έ tanto piü probabile, se si pensa che, per una cagione ο per un'altra, le epistole in versi, che una volta piacquero tanto al Poeta da indurlo a comporne in breve tempo un buon numero, dovettero poi venirgli a noia: di 64 che esse sono, appena tre ο quattro sono sicuramente posteriori al '50, nessuna al '54» (p. 258). Bianchi's remarks suggest that the generic constraints of the metrical epistle may have introduced some rhetorical exaggerations in Patrarch's description. Henri Bresc, Livre et socteti en Sicile, 1299-1499, Centre di studi filologici e linguistic! siciliani, Bollettino, Suppl. 3 (1971), p. 77. 17

Les bibliothdques des patriciens manifestent fröquemment une ouverture, une multiplied d'intirSts que nous n'avons rencontr6es qu'exceptionellement dans les autres groupes37. In view of the problems determining library holdings and the reading programs of various soäal classes, Dante supplies an important piece of evidence for understanding the influence of O . F . scriptoria in northern Italy. On the Terrace of Pride in Purgatory, Dante meets the famous Bolognese book illuminator, Oderisi: «Oh», diss' io lui, «non se' tu Oderisi, l'onor d'Agobbio e l'onor die quell' arte ch'alluminar chiamata έ in Parisi?» «Frate», diss' elli, «piü ridon le carte che pennelleggia Franco bolognese: l'onore έ tutto or suo, e mio in parte».

(Pg.xi.79-84)

This remark is doubly significant given the scarcity of surviving French luxury manuscripts from the 13th century in Italy. As Singleton explains: Dante's reference to painting in manuscripts as «quel'arte ch'alluminar chiamata έ in Parisi» implies a tribute to the pre-eminence of the art in the great northern city. The poet was no doubt fully aware of Parisian excellence because of the influence of French illumination upon Bolognese of the late thirteenth century, in other words, in the period of Oderisi himself. It is significant that Dante designated the art by a word that was current in France in both Latin and French (enluminer) in the thirteenth century, but not in Italy, as early commentators were at pains to point out38. Clearly, from historical, lexical and codicological evidence, many O. F. works were probably circulating in Italy, like the Rose, of which very little trace remains. In reconstructing the literary climate of 13th- and early 14th-century Italy, one cannot avoid seeing how O . F . afforded a far wider range of literary possibilities than Pr. with its concentration on lyric. The Carolingian cycle and the matiire de Rome had an obvious, built-in historical appeal for an It. audience. Their interest in the Arthurian material was also substantial judging from the compilation of Rusticiano da Pisa and the translations of Arthurian materials somewhat later than Dante, like the Tavola Ritonda or the Tristano Riccardiano - yet here It. patrons were interested in prose romances (potentially a reactionary preference) rather than O . F . verse romances not treating historical subjects. Given the preference of upper-class It. audiences for prose works, Dante's Commedia takes on a far more unique and innovative significance when viewed as a reaction to the reception of O . F . and Pr. by his contemporaries. The Commedia seems to constitute a defense of verse composition which harnesses the resources of lyric (which was represented by Pr. lyric and its It. imitators in Sicily and Tuscany) and prose narrative (for which there 37 38

Ibid., p.95. Brieger, Meiss and Singleton, Illuminated Manuscripts of the Divine Comedy, (Princeton, 1969), v.l, p. 36. 18

was no antecedent It. tradition, for as Dante himself notes in DVE I.x.2, «allegat ergo pro se lingua oil quod propter sui faciliorem ac delectabiliorem vulgaritatem quidquid redactum sive inventum est ad vulgare prosaycum, suum est»). As a defense of verse composition within this specific literary historical context, the Commedia presents close affinities with the Roman de la Rose. In order to understand Dante's potential perspective on the Rose, one must examine how Dante's It. predecessors and contemporaries made use of the Rose. One must first explore of the literary influences of both Pr. and O.F., which will be sketched out here only briefly. Dante's own remarks in DVE on the lingua oc, the lingua OÜ and the lingua si orient the discussion usefully: Quelibet enim partium largo testimonio se tuetur. Allegat ergo pro se lingua oü, quod propter sui faciliorem ac delectabiliorem vulgaritatem quicquid redactum sive inventum est ad vulgare prosaycum, suum est: videlicet Biblia cum Troianorum Romanorumque gestibus compilata et Arturi regis ambages pulcerrime et quamplures alie ystoiie ac doctrine. Pro se vero argumentativ alia, scilicet oc, quod vulgares eloquentes in ea primitus poetati sunt, tanquam in perfection dulciorique loquela, ut puta Petrus de Alvernia et alii antiquiores doctores. Tertia quoque, [que] Latinorum est, se duobus privilegiis actestatur preesse: primo quidem quod qui dulcius subtiliusque poetati vulgariter sunt, hii familiares et domestici sui sunt, puta Cynus Pistoriensis et amicus eius; secundo quia magis videtur inniti gramatice que comunis est, quod rationabiliter inspicientibus videtur gravissimum argumentum39. The competition between the different languages of the tripharium ydioma is gentlemanly, and not complicated with intensities of national or dynastic feeling nor with anxieties of influence. What is clear though is that Dante considered O.F. and Pr. in terms of the literary genres in which they excelled as though they contained certain inherent generic qualities. Before returning to Dante's reception of O. F. and Pr. one might examine how his contemporaries who wrote in O.F. demonstrated their self-conscious participation in the O. F. literary canon. Speaking of an O. F. canon is critically helpful in elucidating the continuity of poetological values in O. F. literature. In 39

«[Each of these languages] could defend its claims with abundant evidence. The langue d'oil thus claims for itself, because of its easier and more delightful popular dissemination, that whatever is reworked or originally composed in prose vernacular belongs to it; that is, Biblical compilations together with the deeds of Trojans and Romans, and the lovely adventures of King Arthur and many other historical and instructional works. But the partisans of the second, the langue d'oc, would argue that those who first wrote eloquently in the vernacular composed poetry in it as though in the more perfect and sweeter language, as for example Piere d'Alvernhe and the other older learned [poets]. But then the third, that of the Latins, would claim pre-eminence on the basis of two prerogatives: that is, first of all, the fact that those who have written the most subtle and sweetest poetry in the vernacular are of its society and household, as, for example, Cino da Pistoia and his friend [Dante]; and second, because it would seem to be based more on grammar than on common speech, which, in looking at the matter rationally, appears the strongest argument». (My revised translation of the one proposed by Haller in The Literary Criticism of Dante Alighieri, translated and edited by Robert S. Haller, [Lincoln, Neb., 1973], which is misleading.) 19

the period from 1150 to 1300, a readily observable process informs literary composition in O. F. which centers around the notion of translatio studii, the topos of the transfer of the literary achievement of Antiquity into the present with a concomitant enrichment of meaning stemming from the infusion of the accrued experience of the succeeding culture. This notion is elaborated in O. F. works composed between 1150 and 1300. Chrdtien's prologue to Cligis is the earliest and most explicit vernacular articulation of the topos of translatio studii. In O.F. literature this topos in turn gave rise to a literary continuity topos in its own right, which might be labelled translatio. The translatio topos in the O.F. canon becomes the occasion for the celebration of poetic selfconsciousness; the attendant notion of poetic continuity supplies the occasion for continued literary activity. The central passage of the conjoined Rose provides an enumeration of the poets in love's service which summarizes all preceding poetic activity in terms of one poet continuing the work of his predecessors. The translatio topos therefore is a notion that demands the reconciliation of present literary needs with preceding literary history, a concept peculiarly adaptable to the needs of an inchoate literary tradition, as for instance, that of late 13th-century Italy. Moreover, the translatio topos was doubly pertinent for Dante, first because he noted the importance of this topos in the lingua οϊΐ, and second because he defended his use of It. in the Convivio by referring to Cicero's defense of using Latin, found in the prologue to De finibus. From the perspective of the O.F. canon, the centrality of the translatio topos in the Rose is undeniable. The earliest attempts to write extended poetic narrative in It. were therefore predictably influenced to some extent by the Rose and the O.F. canon. Italians, whether writing in Italy or in France, preferred O.F. for all kinds of literary composition, rather than Pr. or It. Brunetto Latini, writing in France, judged Fr. «la parleure (...) plus delitable et plus commune a tous langages», while his contemporary Martino Canale composed his Chronique des Veniciens in O. F. for his It. audience because he considered O.F. «[la langue] la plus delitable ä lire et ä oi'r, que nule autre»40. O.F. was one literary koine in 13th- and early 14th-century Italy. During his imprisonment in Genoa, Marco Polo dictated the account of his voyages to his fellow Italian, Rusticiano da Pisa (himself author of the earlier Arthurian compilation), in O.F.: demourant en la chartre de Jene fist retraire toutes cestes chouses ä messire Rusticians de Pisa que en celle mei'sme chartre estout au tens qu'il avoit 1298 ans que Iesu eut vesqui41.

O. F. was used for both verse and prose. An anonymous Paduan supplied a prehistory for the Roland cycle in the Entrie d'Espagne (San Marco fr.XXI, 40

41

Cited by Giulio Bertonio, Storia letteraria d'Italia, II Duecento, (Milan, 1964), p. 889. See also Alberto Limentani, Martin da Canal e *Les Estoires de Venise», in: Storia della Cultura veneta, Dalle origini al Trecento, ed. by Gianfranco Folena, (Vicenza, 1976), pp. 590-601. / Viaggi di Marco Polo, ed. by Adolfo Bartoli, (Florence, 1863), p. 332.

20

no. 58 of the Gonzaga catalogue). Composed in the 14th century, the poem reflects a knowledge of such O.F. works as Girart de Roussillon, Saisnes and La Reine Sibile, among others42. Antoine Thomas, who first edited the poem (another edition by Günter Holtus is forthcoming) commented on the author's relationship to literary production in O.F.: Dans le cycle antique, les poömes relatifs ä Alexandre le Grand lui sont particulterement chers ä en juger par les nombreuses allusions qu'il y fait et par l'idde qui lui a pris de placer dans le palais de Noble, done chez les Sarrasins, et de ddcrire en ddtail des peintures repr£sentant, d'aprfes les romans frangais, les principales scenes de l'histoire du edlöbre conqu6rant43.

In so far as the Entrie d'Espagne constitutes a pre-history of the Roland cycle, it exhibits the tendency of northern It. writers to codify or systematize Pr. or O. F. literature, stemming from their sensitivity to the literary values informing a given vernacular work. Syncretism played an important role in the northern It. reception of O.F. works. The Entrie d'Espagne alludes not only to Alexandre and Roland, but also to Troie and to the Breton cycle, including the Queste del Saint Graal. The poem was not finished by this particular Paduan poet, who stopped after 15,805 lines, but was continued by Nicolas of Verona in his Prise de Pampelune (written between 1328 and 1343). Literary continuity was therefore linked to poetic continuation in northern Italy during this period. The exclusively It. circulation of Nicolas' works presupposes a sufficiently large It. audience to justify his efforts. Nicolas of Verona is an exemplary case for the sympathetic and intelligent (albeit conservative) reception of O.F. literature during the first half of the 14th century in Italy. Nicolas composed works in other genres besides the chanson de geste. His creative versatility extended even to the genre of the roman antique: his adaptation of Lucan's Pharsalia filled the gap left in the cycle of the romans antiques by Troie, Alexandre, Thibes, and Eneas. The translatio topos played a significant role in the work of this younger contemporary of Dante. The Pharsale, dated 1343, explicitly addresses the question of an It. poet writing in O.F. Indeed the truthfulness of Nicolas' narrative depends on the correctness of his O. F. - poetic truthfulness was for him proportional to the degree of his participation in the O.F. canon: Reprandre ne m'en poit nus hon - bien le conois Qe de cist feit vos die men^onge ni bufois; Qar selong l'ancien auctor o'ir porois. Ε ce qe ςε vous cont dou feit des Romanois Nicholais le rima du pais veronois Por amor son seignor, de Ferare marchois; Ε eil fu Nicholais, la flor des Estenois, Corant mil e troi ans e qarante trois. Und pri li giugleors qe chantent orendrois Qe de ce ne se vantent e feront cum cortois. 42 43

L'Entrie d'Espagne, ed. by Antoine Thomas, (Paris, 1913) pp. 1—li. Ibid., p.xliv.

21

Qar il dit le proverbe, cum vous οϊ avois: Qi d'altrui drais se vest se desvest mante fois (...) Ε qi le vout canter si doit doner le lois A cil qi le rima, soit zentil ou borgois. Qar ge ne sai nuls hom en Paris ne en Valois Qe non die qe ces vers sont feit par buen frangois Fors qe faus excritors ne li facent sordois. (w. 1930-1941, 1944-1948)

Brunetto Latini, Martino Canale, Rusticiano da Pisa, and Nicolas of Verona (representing a span from 1266 to 1343) alluded explicitly to their participation in the O.F. canon. For them O.F. was the language of narrative, and for Nicolas, narrative in verse. The opposition of prose and verse which underlies much of the discussion of the truthfulness of poetry in the Rose therefore assumes a particularly significant role in the development of It. narrative poetry, for Brunetto's Tesoretto at once borrows heavily from the Rose and constitutes a poetic commentary on the prose Tresor. The examples proposed here of It. poets writing in O. F. for an It. audience demonstrate the continuity of literary values taken from the O.F. canon during the 13th and early 14th century in northern Italy. In claiming that O.F. was the chief literary language in northern Italy, Meyer clearly overstated the case because he did not mention Pr.; nevertheless the importance of O. F. extended poetic narrative in northern Italy is undeniable: L'examen des ouvrages composds ou simplement remanids par des 6crivains italiens nous amöne ä fixer approximativement entre les armies 1230 et 1350 l'6poque od le fran£ais fut la langue littiraire pour l'ltalie septentrionale44.

While O. F. was widely, indeed sometimes exclusively, employed for narrative, Pr. was the preferred language for lyric, even though few Italians actually wrote Pr. lyric. While Italians were largely responsible for the preservation of many Pr. works, they were not apparently as involved in the continuation of Pr. lyric as they were in the continuation of O.F. verse and prose narrative. The causes of this It. participation in O. F. must be at least partially connected with the values of continuation so touted in the O.F. canon exemplified in the Rose. Indeed, not surprisingly, the earliest attempts at It. narrative (Tesoretto, Fiore, Intelligenza) all show the influence of the Rose. In addition to the prevalence of O.F. over Pr. as a literary koine in Italy, one observes the interesting linguistic phenomenon in the 13th and early 14th century of the development of a hybrid literary language variously called Fr.-It. or Franco-Venetian which seems to be both a Mischsprache (which indicates the wide gamut of diction and syntax allowed) and a Kunstsprache (in a sense 'artifical' as well as 'artistic')· Günter Holtus has recently made substantial contributions to the understanding of the lexical elements and literary context of this remarkable example of linguistic 'interference'. The influential factor in the origin of Fr.-It. was the literary prestige of O.F. Incorporating O.F. 44

Meyer, op. cit. (1904), p. 93.

22

elements into It. allowed an It. poet to associate himself with the wellestablished O.F. literary tradition, precisely the one element missing in Italy: Die Wahl gerade des Fr. als Form geschriebener Sprache in Obit, läßt sich dadurch begründen, daß das Fr. als klassische Sprache der chansons de geste, die einen erheblichen Anteil an den frühen Formen des Fr.-It. haben, angesehen wurde und sich der it. Bearbeiter dieser Tradition verpflichtet fühlte, die seinem Werk ein höheres Prestige zukommen ließ. Außerdem verband sich für den it. Dichter, der nicht an eine langjährige Entwicklung einer Literatursprache wie in Frankreich anknüpfen konnte, mit der Wahl einer bestimmten Gattungsart der Gebrauch einer bestimmten Sprachform43.

For the purposes of demonstration one might speak of three classes of surviving Fr.-It. works, based on a modification of the system suggested by Giulio Bertoni46: first, works written in a northern It. dialect with evidence of O.F. lexical and syntactical 'infiltration'; second, O.F. poems copied by It. scribes who introduced Italianisms into a text initially composed in O.F. and third, poems composed in O.F. by Italians. Such a categorization places the Fiore on one end of the scale and Nicolas of Verona's Pharsale on the other. In other words, the notion of Fr.-It. is pertinent here insofar as it formed a bridge between the already well-developed literary tradition in O.F. and the nascent one in It. The Fiore is paradigmatic for Franco-Italian to the extent that it is an explicit attempt at introducing into Italy the quintessence of O.F. literature, the Rose. The Fiore fits well into the category of works written in It. with French infiltration, though Bertoni himself did not mention it as such, nor is the Fiore usually mentioned in studies of Fr.-It. In addition, in the terms of the development of It. as a poetic language, the Fiore seems to be a major step in a process characterized by Giuseppe Petronio as «affinamento linguistico». Its lexical and syntactic features show excessive Gallicisms when compared to the norms governing the use of Gallicisms in works of the scuola siciliana. Petronio, however, situated the poetic diction of the Fiore in terms of its own time. He commented: L'autore del Fiore va forse al di lä di ogni altro, adoperando la parola straniera anche dove quella toscana non sarebbe mancata; ma tante di queste parole che a noi paiono crudamente francesi le troviamo usate per tutto il Trecento anche dal latineggiante Boccaccio, sicch6 dobbiamo pensare che questo infarcire un testo volgare di parole straniere non doveva fare, specie per scrittori di un certo tono, l'impressione che oggi fa a noi. Cosl, tante volte, la sintassi del Fiore 6 intricata, ma έ quella la sintassi del 45

46

Günter Holtus, Lexikalische Untersuchungen zur Interferenz: die franko-italienische «Entrie d'Espagne», Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie, Bd. 170, (Tübingen, 1979), p.56; one should also refer to Holtus' Zur franko-italienischen Sprache und Literatur. Forschungsbericht 1959-1974, Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie 91 (1975), pp.491-533; and his Approches nUthodiques d'une description linguistique du franco-italien, in: Festschrift Kurt Baldinger zum 60. Geburtstag, (Tübingen, 1979), pp. 854-875. Giulio Bertonio, Sur le texte de la «Pharsale» de Nicolas de Virone, Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie 32 (1908), pp.569ff. 23

tempo (...) molte cose che ci feriscono oggi l'orecchio ο che ci paiono sconcordanze rozze ed incondite sono proprie dello stil del tempo e si trovano, sia pure assai meno frequenti, anche in Dante e in Boccaccio47.

The problem of elaborating a poetic diction, which is a major question treated in the Rose itself and which, not surprisingly, is implicitly an important issue in the Fiore, points to the Rose's potential importance for Dante. That is, of different O.F. works, the Rose is uniquely and peculiarly pertinent to Dante's poetic and linguistic preoccupations. Other contemporary It. works influenced by the Rose furnish the necessary background for understanding Dante's potential reception of the Rose. By way of anticipation one might say that Dante's use of the Rose in the Commedia is more sensitive and subtle than that of his contemporaries. Different adaptations of the Rose in Italy (themselves translations of a sort) introduced the hitherto unexplored translatio topos with its concomitant values. Luigi Foscolo Benedetto was the first to study the influence of the Rose in Italy48. Benedetto did not treat the It. dissemination of the Rose; rather he compared passages from the Rose with excerpts from Brunetto's Tesoretto as well as from the Fiore and the Detto d'Amore. While the Rose of course did not always influence It. poets in the same way, its influence is nevertheless consistently discernable in works which pioneer It. as a language of poetic composition, works which expand the possibilities for using It. in extended verse narrative as well as in lyrical compositions. The relevance for Dante of such texts Brunetto's Tesoretto, the Fiore, the Detto d'Amore and the Intelligenza is twofold. First, Dante exhibits in DVE a wide familiarity with literary composition in the vernacular (though the works actually cited by Dante in DVE are always lyrical ones). Brunetto's appearance in the Commedia - like that of Sordello and Arnaut Daniel - is partially related to his importance for Dante as a vernacular poet. Dante's explicit allusions to earlier vernacular poets in the Commedia function as an authorization of his own poetic composition in the illustrious vernacular. Second, these texts presuppose at least a modest circulation of the Rose among a literate public in northern Italy during Dante's career and therefore increase the circumstantial probability of Dante's familiarity with the Rose, particularly given Dante's consistent linguistic and poetic concerns. The Tesoretto comprises 2944 lines of settenari a rima baciata and presents an It. verse 'translation' of Brunetto's own O.F. prose original, the Livresdou Tresor. Bninetto returned to Florence in 1266 from Paris with the first redaction of the O.F. prose text to which he made numerous additons. The first and second redactions circulated widely both in Italy and France. The Tesoretto was written subsequently, but since Brunetto returned to Florence in 47 48

Giuseppe Petronio, Introduzione al «Fiore», Cultura neolatina 8 (1948), p. 58. Luigi Foscolo Benedetto, II «Roman de la Rose» e la letteratura italiana, Beiheft zur Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie, Bd. 21, (Halle a.S., 1910).

24

1266 and the earliest possible date for Jean de Meung to have begun his continuation is 1269 and to have finished sometime before 1278, the Rose must have arrived in Italy sometime in the early 1280's and before Brunetto's death in 1295. It should be noted, of course, that the Tesoretto seems to have been left unfinished for inexplicable reasons. It is clear that Dante knew both the O. F. original and the It. rifacimento. As Petronio suggested, one need only compare Brunetto's description of suicides in the Tesoretto, w . 2835ff.: Ben έ tenuto lacco chi fa del corpo sacco e mette tanto in epa, che talora ne crepa; and the description Dante gives of Mohammed in //.xxviii.26f.: la corata pareva e Ί tristo sacco che merda fa di quel che si trangugia; as well as with the exchange between Mastro Adamo and Simon, 7/.xxx.ll8ff.: Ricorditi, spergiuro, del cavallo rispuose quel ch'avea infiata l'epa; e sieti reo che tutto il mondo sallo! Ε te sia rea la sete onde ti crepa disse Ί greco. There is, however, an important difference between original and 'translation', for the Livres dou Tresor is a non-fictional prose summa, much in the style of Isidore, while the Tesoretto, as F.J. Carmody, who edited the Tresor, pointed out, resembles a poetic commentary on the prose original49. The significance of this work is further complicated by the fact that the verse text borrows heavily from the Rose, which was the pafadigm of a fictional, verse summed0, as though 49

50

Brunetto Latini, Li Livres dou Tresor, ed. by Francis James Carmody, University of California Publications in Modern Philology xxii, (Berkeley, 1948), p.xx. Karl August Ott, writing in the Introduction to his bilingual edition of the Rose, has argued persuasively against the characterization of the Rose as an 'encyclopedia'. Noting Jean de Meung's use of sources, Ott observed: «Es kann angesichts dieses Quellenbefunds nicht die Rede davon sein, daß Jean de Meun, wie man auch in jüngster Zeit noch behauptet hat, aus dem Roman eine Art 'Laienenzyklopädie' gemacht habe, in der er 'die Summe antiken Wissens' der 'aktuellen Erfahrung' seiner Zeit vermittelt hätte, und daß er selbst daher als ein 'Genie enzyklopädischer Darstellung' anzusehen sei. Vielmehr läßt der Quellenbefund nur den entgegengesetzten Schluß zu, nämlich: daß er sich im wesentlichen nur an vier Autoren [Ovid, Boethius, Alanus, Guillaume de St. Amour] gehalten hat, die ihrerseits keiner aktualisierenden Vermittlung bedurften, da sie alle, wenn auch auf verschiedene Weise und in unterschiedlichem Grad, zu seiner Zeit ohnehin höchst aktuell waren» [44-45]. Ott is right in noting moreover that the purely formal criteria for a medieval encyclopedia are not met by the conjoined Rose, nor is the Rose's 'structure', strictly speaking, 'encyclopedic'. Both parts of the work have other structural constraints. At the same time, it might be noted that the Rose - and the Commedia - are 'encyclopedic' in scope and purpose. Guillaume claimed in his prologue: «ce est Ii Romanz de la Rose / ou Part d'Amors est tote enclose» 25

the poeticization of the prose text constituted a deeply motivated response to the poetics of the Rose where philosophical discourse takes on a poetic meaning quite distinct from its original context. In order to appreciate the sharp contrasts between the two works, one has only to compare the opening of the O.F. text with the envoi of the It. prologue. Cis livres est apiel6s Tresors. Car si come li sires ki vuet en petit lieu amasser cose de grandisme vaillance, non pas pour son delit solement, mes pour acroistre son pooir et pour aseurer son estat en guerre et en pais, i met les plus chieres choses et les plus precieus joiaus k'il puet selonc sa bonne entencion; tout autresi est Ii cors de cest livres compil6s de sapience, si come celui ki est estrais de tous les membres de philosophic en une sonme briement [17], The It. version represents a substantial departure from the prose original. It begins with its dedication to an unnamed «valente segnore» and its prologue ends with the following intervention: Io Burnetto [sic] Latino, che vostro in ogne guisa mi son sanza divisa, a voi mi racomando; poi vi presento e mando questo ricco Tesoro. (w.70ff.) Brunetto situates the work historically around 1260, when, during his return from a diplomatic mission to Spain, he was told of the Guelf defeat at Montaperti. The news leaves Brunetto, the narrator-protagonist, pensive and disconsolate. He wanders from the main highway into a forest where he meets Nature in a scene which clearly anticipates the selva oscura of I f . i.: ond' io in tal corrotto pensando, a capo chino, perdei lo gran cammino, e tenni ala traversa d'una selva diversa. (w.l86ff.) (w. 37-38). At the midpoint of the conjoined Rose Jean renamed the romance «le Miroer aus Amoreus» (v. 10, 621). Obviously this Miroer- a 'poetic' encyclopedia - is simultaneously connected with the Narcissus motif in the romance as well as the medieval tradition of a speculum as an encyclopedic handbook. Admittedly, the passages from both parts of the Rose which confer an 'encyclopedic' character on the Rose are not the same thing as demonstrating that the Rose was in any serious prosaic sense an encyclopedia. The sense in which the Rose and the Commedia are treated here as poetic encyclopedias is not the same sense in which the Rose has hitherto been characterized as a 'Laienenzyklopädie'. Provided one never loses sight of Ott's cautionary remarks, it is important to recall that the Rose incorporates (albeit nonexhaustively) various forms of O.F. and Medieval Latin poetic experience (lyric, romance, 'philosophical epic') and consciously places itself within the tradition of the translatio studii, that is, Jean de Meung saw his continuation of Guillaume de Lorris not only as a continuation of Guillaume de Lorris but also as a continuation of his poetic predecessors, and as such it comprises a 'poetic encyclopedia'. One should also refer to Ott's excellent Der Rosenroman, Erträge der Forschung Bd. 145, (Darmstadt, 1980). 26

Brunetto meets Nature who talks to him about creation, cosmology and natural geography, a scene reminiscent of passages in the Anticlaudianus, De planctu Naturae and the Rose. When Nature finishes speaking, Brunetto wanders into un bei prato: io giunsi in un bei prato fiorito d'ogne lato Ιο ρΐύ ricco del mondo. Ma or parea ritondo, ora avea quadratura. (w.2201ff.)

Benedetto suggested that these last two lines reflected an attempt on Brunette's part to reconcile an inconsistency in the Rose: in Guillaume's part the vergier de Deduit is square, in Jean the biau pare superimposed on the vergier de Deduit is round. The Tesoretto's relationship to the Rose provides an important perspective on the late 13th-century northern It. reception of the notion of poetic summa implicit in the Rose. The prose Tresor preceded the conjoined Rose. Yet between 1266, when he returned to Florence, and the time he wrote the Tesoretto, Brunetto must not only have read the Rose but also have felt the need to apply the notions of poetic summa informing the Rose to his earlier prose sonme. From his use of Brunetto in If.xv, it seems that Dante understood the generic relationship between the Tresor and Tesoretto. InfernoXV has long troubled dantisti seeking to understand the reasons for Dante's consigning Brunetto to Hell. I would suggest that there is an important and, partially (as well as good-naturedly) • ironic, inversion involved here. Brunette's commendation of il mio Tesoro in his parting words to Dante alludes to the Tesoretto, «questo ricco Tesoro»: Sieti raccomandato il mio Tesoro, nel qual io vivo ancora, e piü non cheggio.

(w. 119-120)

While the topos of survival in one's poetry is one of the oldest literary commonplaces, in the Tesoretto Brunetto says he would prefer to have his work «gittato in inferno» than to have it widely diffused among those who did not understand it («in man di fanti»): Ma i' ho giä trovato in prosa ed in rimato cose di grande assetto e poi per gran sagretto l'ho date a caro amico; poi, con dolor lo dico, le vidi in man di fanti, e rasemprati tanti, che si ruppe la bolla, e rimase per nulla. S'aven cosi di questo, s) dico che sia pesto, e di carta in quaderno sia gittato in inferno.

(w.99ff.)

27

Clearly Brunetto's Tresor and Tesoretto (works he had «trovato/in prosa ed in rimato») had been «rasemprati tanti», so that placing Brunetto in Hell pays tribute to Brunetto's poetic fortunes. The irony of the inversion is confirmed by Dante's placing Brunetto among the very sodomites whom he had condemned in both the Tesoretto and the Tresor: Ma tra questi peccati son viepid condannati que' che son soddomiti. Deh, come son periti que' che contra natura brigan cotal lussura! (w.2859ff.)

Dante simultaneously celebrates Brunetto's poetic influence («m'insegnavate come l'uom s'etterna», v. 85) and incorporates Brunetto's poem into his own (for example, Brunetto's «selva diversa» may anticipate Dante's «selva oscura» and Brunetto's gesture of grief at hearing of the Guelf defeat at Montaperti, «pensando, a capo chino», may lie behind v.44f., «ma Ί capo chino/tenea com'uom che reverente vada»). By having 'thrown' Brunetto into Hell («gittato in inferno»), Dante pays tribute to the importance of Brunetto's poem. Celebration is combined with inversion and opposition with continuity, much as they will be again with Arnaut Daniel. Such a complex response to an earlier poet is often found in romance, as, e.g., in Chr6tien's Charrette, where Lancelot's 'adoration' of Guentevre's hairs is simultaneously foolish and moving, and probably all the more moving because of this complexity. The discussion here should point to the ways in which Brunetto's works are present in the Commedia, and by extension, adumbrate the possible presence of other earlier vernacular narratives. This account is more modest than Andr6 P6zard's systematic investigation of Dante's reasons for condemning Priscian, Francesco d'Accorso and Andrea de' Mozzi along with Brunetto to Hell as sodomites 51 . S1

Andrt P6zard, in Dante sous la pluie de feu, (Enfer, chant TV), (Paris, 1950), brought detailed erudition to bear on the question raised by //.xv. Pizard would have Dante condemn Brunetto along with Priscian, Francesco d'Accorso and Andrea de' Mozzi for blasphemy rather than sodomy. While Pizard's treatment is' complex, the following citations give a representative view of his discussion: «Une conclusion, partielle au moins, s'impose en ce point ( . . . ) le reniement de la langue maternelle, transmise de gdndration en gdnöration, ressemble fort au reniement volontaire de cette vie, flambeau que les sifecles ont, depuis le premier homme, fait passer jusqu'ä nous. Le blaspheme de Brunet Latin est une sorte de suicide intellectuel, en meme temps qu'une violente offense contre la bontd divine» [97]. Using Dante's attack in Cv.I. xi upon «Ii malvagi uomini d'Italia che commendano lo volgare altrui e lo loro proprio dispregiano», which P6zard takes to refer to Brunetto who used O. F. rather than to Italians who uses Pr. (who seem to be Dante's target, «questi fanno vile lo parlare italico e prezioso quello di Provenza»), Pizard concludes: «Ainsi Brunet Latin, mauvais pofete italien et prosateur qui se döfie de la prose italienne, au lieu de reconnaitre son incapacitd, qui n'est pas un crime, prdföre accuser l'outil que Dieu lui a remis» [105], Finally, P6zard is careful to point out that Dante's condemnation of Brunetto is not tantamount to a condemnation of O. F.: «Toutefois Dante ne juge pas

28

Dante's characterization of these sinners, tutti fur cherci e litterati grandi e di gran fama, d'un peccato medesmo al mondo lerci,

(w.106-108)

perhaps might be explained by referring it to the 'sowing and reaping' topos which often informs romance composition. One might compare the opening of Chritien's Perceval: Ki petit semme petit quelt, Et qui auques requeillir velt, En tel liu sa semence espande Que Diex a cent doubles li rande; Car en terre qui riens ne valt, Bone semence seche et faut. CRESTIENS semme et fait semence D'un romans que il encomence.

(w. 1-8)

Perhaps insofar as Brunetto did not seek the increase of his poetic semence, he might be characterized as 'sinning against nature'. The Livres dou Tresor and the Tesoretto were widely circulated. The borrowings in the Tesoretto from the Rose, (the use of narrator-protagonist, the poeticization of philosophical discourse and cosmology and the bei prato) point to the pivotal role played by the Rose in influencing the composition of a poetic commentary on the prose summa. Dante understood the different claims of poetry and prose and in the second book of DVE assigns poetry precedence over prose: «prosaycantes ab inventoribus magis accipiunt, et quia quod inventum est prosaycantibus permanere videtur exemplar et non e converso, Pceuvre £ran sehen» [468]), in light of recent research, a parallel now seems likely. The Commedia's two corrected versions of Narcissus may therefore correspond to the Rose's correction of Narcissus. Perhaps the reference to the vergier de Deduit as a «paradis terrestre» motivated Dante's borrowing. When Amant enters the vergier, his joy makes him believe that he is «em paradis terrestre» 132 : Lors entrai, sanz plus dire mot, par l'uis que Oiseuse overt m'ot, el vergier; et quant je fui enz, je fui liez et bauz et joienz; et sachiez que je cuidai estre por voir em paradis terrestre: tant estoit Ii leus delitables, qu'i sembloit estre esperitables.

(w. 629-636)

The important difference is that Dante 'really' is in the Earthly Paradise while in the Rose, the biau pare invoked by Genius near the end of the Rose is at once contrasted with the vergier de Deduit and the paradise where Adam was formed: qui la forme et la matire du pare verroit, bien porroit dire qu'onques en si biau paradis ne fu fourmez Adan jadis. (w. 20,563-566) Amant joins Oiseuse's carol, «sanz demorance et sanz arest/a la querole me sui pris» (v.786f.). Following the dance, Amant wanders through the vergier pursued by Amor and Doux Regard, until he comes to the Fountain of Narcissus where Amor shoots Amant with his arrows. Dante's experience in the Earthly Paradise might be seen as an abbreviatio of this story. After Matelda (the Oiseuse-like double to Leah) leads Dante through Lethe, he joins a danza which brings him to Beatrice: Indi mi tolse, e bagnato m'offerse dentro a la danza de le quattro belle; e ciascuna del bracchio mi coperse. «Noi siam qui ninfe e nel del siamo stelle: pria che Beatrice discendesse al mondo, fummo ordinate a lei per sue ancelle» (...)

132

Pd.iii.18. He does not discuss other, less patent, allusions to Narcissus. Dragonetti does not refer in any extensive manner to Ovid's treatment of the myth in order to establish the textual and thematic parallels between the Metamorphoses and the Commedia. Paradis is rather loosely used by Amant, who at one point observes «il n'est nus graindres paradis / d'avoir amie a son devis» (v. 1297f.). Amant characterizes his 'rescue' by Bel Accueil as a passage from Hell to Paradise, «or sui cheoiz, ce m'est avis, / de grant enfer en paradis» (w.3335f.). 87

Cosl cantando cominciaro; e poi al petto del grifon seco menarmi, ove Beatrice stava volta a noi. Disser: «Fa che le viste non risparmi: posto t'avem dinanzi a li smeraldi: ond'Amor giä ti trasse le sue armi».

(Pg.xxxi. 103-108, 112-117)

The parallel to the Rose is found not only in the danza, but also in the last line cited above, «ond' Amor giä ti trasse le sue armi», which recalls the opening of the Fiore: Lo Dio d'Amor con su' arco mi trasse perch'i' guardava un fior che m'abellia.

One may tentatively conclude that the Rose is present in the Earthly Paradise in a number of important ways and might reflect a careful integration of the Rose's attitude toward Ovid's version of the story of Narcissus. One should bear in mind the limitations of these parallels. The borrowings investigated here are scattered throughout the better part of five canti. This rather diffuse signaling of the Rose's presence here contrasts with the explicitness of the Aeneid's presence. It is also necessary to determine whether iconographic tradition might have influenced Dante's portrayal of Leah. Her two iconographic utensils are a mirror and flower garland. Rachel and Leah were prototypes for the Ecclesia/Synagoga opposition, as found in the sculptural program of Chartres. This tradition does not seem to have influenced Dante in Pg.xxvii. The two women were of course representatives of the contemplative and the active life, respectively, or as Dante in fact has Leah say of Rachel and herself, «lei lo vedere, e me l'ovrare appaga» (v.108). The origin of the wreath as an iconographic utensil for Leah appears to be Dante's description of her133. Rose garlands or wreaths were in themselves such a common utensil that the Princeton Index of Christian Art stops listing occurrences of wreaths in works composed after 700. Given the other parallels in the Earthly Paradise to the vergier de Deduit, it seems most probable that Dante was influenced by the description of Oiseuse in the Rose (rather than the occasional, and by no means consistent portrayal of Oiseuse with mirror and comb, taken by John Fleming as the attributes of the 'Gothic Luxuria'134). Dante's selection of these utensils for Leah would indeed reflect a positive reception of Oiseuse and may furnish the key to understanding Dante's

133

134

E. Dinkier and V. Schubert, Vita activa et contemplativa, Lexikon der christlichen Ikonographie, ed. by Englebert Kirschbaum etat., (Rome, 1968-72), v.IV, col.467: Lea (ikonogr. Anlehnung an Caritas) hält Diadem u. Kranz, (ein Reflex v. Dante, Purg. 27, 97). John V. Fleming, The Roman de la Rose, Α Study in Allegory and Iconography, (Princeton, 1969), p. 75. For the difficulties of this identification, cf. My forthcoming article, Reflections on Oiseuse's Mirror: Iconographic Tradition, Luxuria and the «Roman de la Rose», in: Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie. 88

reaction to the Rose itself, a question which must be treated once the presence of the Rose in the Commedia is established. The second parallel is Beatrice's discussion of moonspots in Pd.ii. Dante has Beatrice refute a theory regarding their nature which he had earlier proposed in Convivio II.xiii.9—10. In Convivio II, Dante applies techniques of allegorical exegesis to the vernacular. He distinguishes between poets' allegory and theologians' allegory at the very outset, preferring to follow the former rather than the latter. The first eleven chapters of Convivio Π provide an exposition of the literal sense of the canzone, «Voi che 'ntendono il terzo del movete,/udite il ragionar ch'fe nel mio core». ChapterΧΠ turns to the allegorical sense, «poi che la litterale sentenza έ sufficiente demonstrata, έ da procedere a la esposizione allegorica e vera». As part of explaining the significance of the third heaven, Dante assigns the various heavens to corresponding parts of the quadrivium and trivium. He defends the assignment of «Gramatica» to the Heaven of the Moon in the following terms: Dico che Ί cielo de la Luna con la Gramatica si somiglia [per due proprietadi], per che ad esso si pud comparare. Che se la Luna si guarda bene, due cose si veggiono in essa proprie, che non si veggiono ne l'altre stelle: l'una si έ l'ombra che έ in essa, la quale non έ altro che raritade del suo corpo, a la quale non si possono terminare li raggi del sole e ripercuotersi cosl come ne l'altra parti; l'altra si έ la variazione de la sua luminositade, che ora luce da uno lato, e ora luce da un altro, secondo che lo sole la vede. Ε queste due proprietadi hae la Gramatica: ch£, per la sua infinitade, li raggi de la ragione in essa non si terminano, in parte spezialmente de li vocabuli; e luce or di qua or di lä in tanto quanta certi vocabuli, certe declinazioni, certe construzioni sono in uso che giä non furono, e molte giä furono che ancor saranno: si come dice Orazio nel principio de la Poetria quando dice: «Molti vocabuli rinasceranno che giä caddero».

Scholars have examined Beatrice's repudiation of Convivio II.xiii.9—10 almost exclusively from the perspective of sources. No scholar has connected Beatrice's refutation with Dante's repudiating his earlier concommitant belief in the variability of gramatica, so that the import of Pd.ii is an affirmation of the invariability of gramatica as expounded in DVE II.ix.ll: «gramatica nichil aliud est quam quedam inalterabilis locutionis indemptitas diversis temporibus atque locis». (P.V. Mengaldo, writing on «Gramatica» in the Enciclopedia dantesca, v.Ill, p.259, considers this passage from the Convivio to represent the only time Dante used the word gramatica in its normal meaning as "science of language". In the Convivio, however, Dante connects the variability of the moon's luminosity to the variability of gramatica, which contrasts with Dante's position in DVE. Since precisely this property of gramatica was of recurrent interest for Dante, one should reject Mengaldo's suggestion.) Beatrice's remarks in Pd.ii reaffirm the values of the translatio topos which presuppose the variability of poetic language over time. In order to understand the potential presence of the Rose here, it is helpful to review the pertinent passage from the Rose and then Beatrice's discussion in Pd.ii. 89

In the Rose, Nature's description of moonspots is based in part on Averroes' Sermo de substantia orbis, and in part on Albertus Magnus' De caelo et mundo135. Within the Rose Nature's account emphasizes the importance of example (experiment) and conforms to the overall pattern in the Rose of repeated but unfulfilled promises of a gloss (here, for instance, the example is proposed «en leu de glose»). At the same time one observes here another characteristic feature of the Rose, the incorporation of scientific vocabulary in a romance format: Si semble il aus genz que la lune ne soit pas bien nete ne pure par ce qu'el pert par leus occure; mes c'est par sa nature double qu'el pert par leus espesse et trouble: d'une part luit, d'autre part cesse por ce qu'ele est clere et espesse, si li fet sa lueur peril ce que ne peut pas referir la clere part de sa sustance les rais que Ii soleuz i lance ainz s'en passent par mi tout outre; mes l'espesse lueur demoustre, qui bien peut aus rais contrester por sa lumiere conquester. Et por fere antandre la chose, bien an peut l'an, en leu de glose, a brief moz un example metre, por mieuz fere esclarcir la letre. (w. 16,806-824)

The direct pertinence of the Rose to the treatment of the moonspots problem in Pd.ii is the recommendation of an experiment. In Bruno Nardi's extensive treatment of the background of Pd.ii, the passage regarding the use of an experiment is not assigned a source, for Nardi claims: II secondo argomento opposto alia dottrina averroistica delle macchie lunari (w.73-105) έ desunto dall'esperienza (...) Questo modo di argomentare non έ alieno dallo spirito che dominava le scuole delle Arti, ove cominciarono a farsi i primi esperimenti e osservazioni che prepararono il Rinascimento.136

Nardi, who otherwise furnishes a compilation of remarks made by various Neoplatonic, Arabic or Scholastic thinkers (Avicenna, Messalach, Averroes, Albertus Magnus, Robert Grosseteste, Thomas Aquinas, among others), does not suggest any connection with the Rose, which perhaps represents a scholarly oversight. Dante uses the esperienza (= example) recommended by the Rose in order to refute the theory which the Rose itself propounded, and which Dante himself proposes in the Convivio. 135

136

Paget Toynbee, Jean de Mean's Account of the Spots on the Moon, Romania 24 (1895), pp. 277f. Bruno Nardi, La dottrina delle macchie lunari nel secondo canto del «Paradiso», Saggi di filosofia dantesca, (Florence, 19672), pp. 13-14.

90

One must also review briefly what Averroes and Albertus had to say regarding moonspots in order to understand how the Rose might mediate Dante's reception of them. Averroes explained in his Sermo de substantia orbis: Et Luna videtur esse densa et obscura et recipiens lumen ab alio, scilicet a Sole. Et in libro de Animalibus dixit Aristo[telis] quod nature eius est unigenea natura terrae plusquam caeterarum stellarum. Et forte corpora coelestia diversantur in raritate et densitate, quae sunt causae illuminationis et obscuritatis, licet haec non inveniantur nisi in Luna tantum137.

Andrd P6zard commented on the relationship between Averroes' explanation and that of the Rose: La th6orie des corps «rares et denses» telle que l'exposait le Banquet avait bien 6t6 6mise par Averroes que Dante connait parfaitement. Mais la doctrine d'Averrofcs ä vrai dire n'apparait pas aussi nette et poussöe que celle du Roman de la Rosem.

In spite of Dante's sympathetic gesture of placing Averroes («che Ί gran commento feo») in Limbo, Dante has Beatrice refute Averroes' opinion. Beatrice's argument about the respective reflective properties of the denser and lighter portions of the moon depends only partially on Albertus Magnus' comparison between the moon and mirrors found in De caelo et mundo: Quia autem de idolo, quod apparet in luna, fecimus mentionem, sciendum, quod causa idoli non est ilia quae dicta ab ANTIQUIS, quod videlicet luna sit sicut speculum et idolum illud sit umbra et figura montium et marium (...) Si enim hoc esset, tunc lumen, quod est in luna, esset per reflectionem factam ad ipsam sicut ad speculum139.

However the notion of using an experiment to test this particular theory is found in the Rose rather than in Albertus Magnus' writings. Pdzard points to the similarities between the passage in the Rose which suggests using a mirror backed with lead (v.l6,833f., «plon, ou quelque chose espesse,/qui les rais trespasser ne lesse») and Beatrice's recommending an experiment with mirrors where: l'altrui raggio si rifonde cosi come color torna per vetro lo qual di retro a s6 piombo nasconde

(Pd. ii. 88-90)

Dante apparently chose the most striking aspect of the Rose's discussion of moonspots: the recommendation of an experiment rather than a gloss. Dante uses the experiment to invert the Rose's content but to follow its poetic procedure, at once endorsing and inverting the Rose, (not unlike Jean de

137 138

139

Averroes, Sermo de Substantia Orbis, (Venice, 1562), f.7v., spelling normalized. Andr6 P6zard, Lüne et Fortune chez Jean de Meung et chez Dante, Biblioteca dell'Archivum romanicum, ser. 1, vol. 86 (1966), p. 994; reprinted in: Dans le sillage de Dante, (Paris, 1975), pp. 463-^74. Lib. II, tract. 3, ch. 8, in Albertus Magnus, Opera omnia, gen. ed. Bernhard Geyer; Tomus V, De Caelo et mundo, ed. by Paul Hoßfeld, (Münster i. W., 1971), p. 160, 11.3-11.

91

Meung's relationship to Guillaume de Lorris). P6zard compared the Rose's and the Commedia's treatment of moonspots, and concluded: Jean de Meung, selon le premier de ses grands 6diteurs Ch. V. Langlois, tire sa science d'Albert le Grand: mais la comparaison du miroir et de la glace sans tain ne se trouve nulle part chez Albert le Grand: ce n'est pas lä non plus que Dante a pu la prendre. II aurait pu, qui sait, l'emprunter ä Macrobe, qui est sans doute la source du Roman (Langlois [p. 136]): mais Dante ne semble pas connaitre Macrobe par ailleurs; n'est-il pas naturel de penser qu'il est parti du Roman mSme? [994]

While the comparison of the moon to a mirror is present in Macrobius («luna speculi instar lumen qui illustratur emittit», I.xix.12)140, the suggestion of an 140

The most important research on Dante's relationship to Macrobius has been conducted by Georg Rabuse, author of the entry on Macrobius for the Enciclopedia dantesca, (ν.ΙΠ. pp. 757-759); and Dantes Jenseitsvision und das Somnium Scipionis, Wiener Studien 72 (1959), pp. 144-164; reprinted with minor revisions in Dante Alighieri, Aufsätze zur Divina Commedia, ed. by Hugo Friedrich, (Wege der Forschung, v. 159; Dannstadt, 1968), pp. 499-522. The most relevant of the parallels suggested by Rabuse is the utilization of Macrobius' text by Dante in the Heaven of the Fixed Stars. Dante turns to look back at «l'aiuola che ci fa tanto feroci» (Pii.xxii.151) and sees the different spheres through which he has passed. Beatrice tells him that he is near the point of his salvation: «Tu se' si presso a l'ultima salute», comindö Beatrice, «che tu dei aver le luci tue chiare e acute; e perö, prima che tu piü t'inlei, rimira in giü, e vedi quanto mondo sotto Ii piedi giä esser ti fei». (Pd. xxii. 124-129) This passage seems based, as the Grandgent/Singleton edition suggests, on Cicero's De re publica IV. xvi (i.e., Somnium Scipionis 3.7): Erant autem eae stellae quas numquam ex hoc loco vidimus et eae magnitudines omnium quas esse numquam suspicati sumus, ex quibus erat ea minima quae ultima a caelo, citima terns luce lucebat aliena, stellarum autem globi terrae magnitudinem facile vincebat - iam ipsa terra mihi parva visa est ut me imperii nostri quo quasi punctum eius attingimus paeniteret. After Africanus provides Scipio with a description of the celestial spheres and explains their music, he appeals to Scipio to realize that only his body is mortal and that he should recognize himself to be a god: «sic habeto, non esse te mortalem sed corpus hoc (...) deum te igitur scito esse» (8.2). This additional parallel to Cicero, not noted by Grandgent/Singleton, is even more important, because Scipio's apotheosis contrasts with Dante's salvation. Significantly, Macrobius suggests in his commentary that this passage was the climax of Cicero's work, whence its potential interest for Dante: «et haec sit praesentis operis consummatio ut animam non solum immortalem, sed deum esse clarescat» (2.12.5, ed. Willis, p. 131,11.18-20). Jean de Meung uses this very passage from Macrobius in the Rose to undermine Macrobius' authority (thereby effecting a kind of poetic self-emancipation). Jean has Nature refuse to discuss dreams and their significance; Nature belittles those qui, par grant devocion, en trop grant contemplacion, font apparair en leur pansees les choses qu'il ont porpansees, et les cuident tout proprement

92

experiment «en leu de glose» represents the Rose's original innovation of the tradition. The appeal of this passage for Dante may stem from the opposition in Rose between example and glose. Glossing, it will be recalled, is an activity associated in the Rose principally with Raison 141 . Example represents the opposite activity, proposed by Nature «en leu de glose». In Pd. ii Beatrice rejects Dante's explanation of moonspots by pointing out that reason's wings were too short to provide a satisfactory explanation, «vedi che la ragione ha corte l'ali» (v.57), whereupon she proposes an experiment to make up for the insufficiencies of reason. The dramatic import of the inadequacy of Raison in the Rose is, of course, different from the context in which Beatrice demon-

141

voair defers apertement; et ce n'est for trufle et mangonge, ainsinc con de l'ome qui songe, qui voit, ce cuide, en leur presences les experituex sustances, si con fist Scipion jadis; et voit anfer et paradys et del et air et mer et terre et tout quan que l'an i peut querre. (w. 18,327-340) (For a different view of Macrobius' role in the Rose, see: Charles Dahlberg, Macrobius and the Unity of the «Roman de la Rose», Studies in Philology 58 [1961], pp. 573-582). Nature, by calling Scipio's dream trufle et mangonge - the exemplary true dream of the prologue - has complicated the problem of poetic truthfulness. This scene poeticizes the authority topos by its explicit undercutting of Macrobius' authority. Dante on the other hand, transposes Macrobius' commentary: he is near salvation, not apotheosis. The Rose and the Commedia present receptions of Scipio's apotheosis with poetological affinities. Perhaps the Rose's use of this passage from Macrobius prepared for Dante's reception of it - though such a conclusion rests on assumptions on which no scholarly consensus has yet formed, i.e., that Dante not only read Macrobius and the Rose, but also understood the reception of Macrobius in the Rose as outlined above. Raison says on the one hand, Par son [God's] grd sui je coutumiere de parier proprement des choses, quant il me plest, sanz metre gloses. (w. 7048-51) On the other hand, when Raison speaks of coilles, she scandalizes Amant. Realizing that she has offended Amant whom she had tried to woo away from the Rose, she immediately appeals to glossing: En ma parole autre sen ot, au mains quant des coillons parloie. (w. 7128-29) Some twenty lines later she goes back on her statement: Mais puis t'ai tex .II. moz renduz, et tu les as bien entenduz, qui pris doivent estre a la letre, tout proprement, sans glose metre. (w. 7151-54) This rhetorical flip-flop shows the bad faith with which Raison appeals to Amant. Amant cuts through her arguments on glossing; he claims he does need a gloss for coilles, nor does he desire to gloss the poets. He concedes, however, that if he can only win his Rose through glossing, then he will gladly gloss: - Dame, bien les i puis entendre, 93

strates the deficiency of reason, but the antithesis between Raison or reason (associated with glossing) and experimentation is evident in both works when they treat the subject of moonspots. The third parallel to be considered is the river and fountain of light which form a pool in which the celestial Rose is reflected in Pd.xxx. Edward Witke treated the relationship of this passage to the description of the visit of Prudentia to the palace of God in Book VI of the Anticlaudianus, though he did not suggest any parallel to the Rose142. Separately from any attempt to demonstrate parallels between the two poems, J.Huizinga pointed out that Alanus' poetic impact in the Middle Ages stemmed from the reception of his works in the Rose and the Commedia. Comparing Alanus to Hildebert of Lavardin und Walter of Chätillon, Huizinga noted: Mit Hildebert oder Walter hält er, in Bezug auf die poetische Qualität, den Vergleich nicht aus. Doch hat er durch seine Dichtungen länger und tiefer auf die Nachwelt gewirkt als jene. Nicht in dem Sinn, daB seine Form weiter gepflegt worden wäre, sondern weil sein Stoff und seine Darstellung in zwei der allerwichtigsten Dichtungen des späteren Mittelalters Aufnahme und Weiterbildung fanden: im Roman de la Rose und in der Divina Commedia143.

This striking similarity makes one suspect that the Rose may have been an intermediary of Alanus for Dante. The scene in Pd.xxx furnishes a test case. After passing from the Primum Mobile to the Empyrean, Dante sees a river of light turn into a round pool in which the tiers of the celestial Rose are mirrored: e vidi lume in forma di rivera fulvido di fulgore, intra due rive dipinte di mirabel primavera (...) Non έ fantin che si sübito rua col volto verso il latte, se si svegli molto tardato da l'usanza sua, come fec'io, per far migliori spegli ancor de Ii occhi, chinandomi a l'onda che si deriva perchd vi s'immegli;

142

143

qu'il i sunt si legiers a prendre qu'il n'est nus qui frangois seüst qui prendre ne les i deiist, n'ont mestier d'autres declarances. Mes des poetes les sentences, les fables et les methaphores ne b6 je pas a gloser ores. Mes se ja puis estre gueriz et Ii servises m'iert meriz don si grant guerredon atens, bien les gloser6 tout a tens, au mains ce que m'en afferra. (w. 7156-67) Edward Witke, The River of Light in the «Anticlaudianus» and the «Divina Cornmedia», Comparative Literature 11 (1959), pp. 144-156. Huizinga, op. cit., p. 102.

94

e si come di lei bewe la gronda de le palpebre mie, cosi mi parve di sua lunghezza divenuta tonda (...) E' si distende in circular figura, in tanto che la sua circunferenza sarebbe al sol troppo larga cintura (...) Ε come clivo in acqua di suo imo si speccbia, quasi per vedersi addorno, quando έ nel verde e ne' fioretti opimo si, soprastando al lume intomo intorno, vidi speccharsi in ρΐύ di mille soglie quanto di noi lä sü fatto ha ritorno. (Pd.xxx. 61-63, 82-90,103-114) This passage from Pd.xxx recalls the description of the river and fountain of light which Prudentia sees in the palace of God: Hie uidet irrigui fontis radiare nitorem Qui prediues aquis, reliquo conspectior anne, Sidera luce domat, precellit mella sapore. Cuius deliciis cedit paradisus, odore Balsama uincuntur, nardus summittitur illi. A quo procedens riuus non immemor horum Que fons ille gerit, totum sibi fontis honorem Assumit, fontique pari respondet honore; Non tamen irriguum minor afflat gratia fontem. Ergo fons riuum, riuus cum fonte fluentum Producit, retinens fontis riuique saporem. Cum sint diuersi, fons, riuus,-flurnen in unum Conueniunt eademque trium substancia, simplex Esse, sapor similis, color unus, splendor in illis Vnicus et uultus horum conformis et idem Ad speciem fontis sol uincens lumine solem. (VI. 234-249) The fountain of light portrays an allegory of the Trinity: the fons produces a stream (riuus) which in turn produces a river {flumen). The flumen proceeds from the fons and the riuus («riuus cum fonte fluentum/producit») just as the Nicene Creed says the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and Son (the fllioque clause). Witke showed the parallels involved here without, however, commenting on the recurrence of mirror imagery in Dante's rehandling of the scene from Alanus, in which the tiers of the celestial Rose are reflected in the pool of light. The Rose's use of this same passage from Alanus might explain Dante's use of it. In describing the fountain of life in the biau pare, Genius discusses the fountain as a metaphor for the Trinity: Cele fonteine que j'ai dite, qui tant est bele et tant profite por guerir, tant sunt savourees, toutes bestes anlangorees, rant tourjoiz par .ΙΠ. doiz soutives eves douces, cleres et vives; si sunt si pres a pres chascune que toutes s'assamblent a une si que, quant toutes les verroiz, 95

et une et .ΠΙ. an trouverroiz, s'ous voulez au conter esbatre, ne ja n'an i trouveroiz .ΠΙΙ., mes tourjorz .ΠΙ. et tourjorz une.

(w. 20,435-447)

Genius explicitly compares this fountain to the fountain of Narcissus in the vergier de Deduit. Genius' remarks are paradoxical because the words of his sermon are addressed to the Barons of Love preparing to assault the castle of Jealousy located in the middle of the same vergier which Genius is criticizing. The importance of this second fountain seems to lie in the truthfulness of its reflections: Si ra si merveilleus poair que cil qui la le vont voair, si tost con cele part se virent et leur faces an l'eve mirent, tourjorz, de quelque part qu'il soient, toutes les choses du pare voient et les connoissent proprement, et eus metsmes ansement; et puis que la se sunt veü, ja mes ne seront deceü de nule chose que puisse estre, tant i devienent sage mestre. (w. 20,537-20,548)

Am ant seems to be disabused of his wishful thinking by this fountain. The line «ja mes ne seront deceü» (v.20,546) recalls Amant's criticism of the fountain of Narcissus at the very beginning: Cil miroers m'a deceü, se j'eüsse avant coneii quex ert sa force et sa vertuz, ne m'i fusse ja enbatuz. (w. 1607-10)

The implication is that Amant, thanks to Genius' sermon, can look at this Rose in the fountain of life rather than in the fountain of Narcissus. Dante seems to use the implied gesture of Amant in his probable reworking of the passage. The pool of light reflects the celestial Rose in which he sees «speccharsi in piu di mille soglie/quanto di noi lä sü fatto ha ritorno», just as whoever looks in the fountain of life toutes les choses du pare voient et les connoissent proprement, et eus me'ismes ansement. (w. 20,542-44)

Dante thus seems to translate the biau pare into his description of the moment of revelation as he passes from the Primum Mobile into the Empyrean. The supreme fable of the Rose is the carboncles merveillables, a culmination of an entire system of fables: ce creront fole gent a peine et le tandront pluseur a fables

(w. 20, 495 f.)

The highest poetic fable of the Rose seems to provide Dante with the framework for describing his moment of seeing the courts of Heaven revealed. 96

The primary limitation of this parallel is that it has never been noticed by scholars before and could seem shocking in its implications144. The textual 144

The influence of Alanus on Dante was first examined in very general terms by Eugöne Bossard in his thesis Alani de Insulis Anticlaudianus cum Divina Dantis Alighieri Comoedia collatus, (Angers, 1885), Ernst Robert Curtius, convinced of the necessity of investigating Dante's «Verhältnis zum Mittelalter», examined the relationship of Dante to Alanus in a short essay: Dante und Alanus ab Insulis, Romanische Forschungen 62 (1950), pp. 28-31. Curtius pointed to the important parallel between the role of Ratio in Alanus and Vergil in Dante: «Phronesis (auch Sophia genannt) mu£ an [dem Übergang von den unteren Himmelssphären zum Empyreum] ihre Begleiterin Ratio zurücklassen wie Dante den Vergil am Schlufi des Purgatorio. Die Theologie übernimmt statt jener die Führung, wie Beatrice an Stelle des römischen Dichten» (p.28). Curtius also discusses, inter alia, the possible relationship between letargus in Alanus («die Bewußtseinsverdunkelung, die zugleich Entrückung ist») to letargo in Dante (Pd. xxxiii.94). The problem of letargo is treated by Wolfgang Schmid in his essay, Philosophisches und Medizinisches in der Consolatio des Boethius, Festschrift Bruno Snell, (Munich, 1956), pp. 113-144, particularly pp. 141-144. Schmid concludes, «Auffallen muß bei Dante letargo im Vergleich zu Alanus oder Boethius, daß seine ja gerade auf Religiöses zielende Verwendung des Wortes den ursprünglichen Richtungssinn der von der spätantiken Philosophie und Theologie geschaffenen Lethargiemetaphorik preisgibt» (p. 144). Peter Drenke reviews Schmid's conclusions in his essay, Boethius, Alanus and Dante, Romanische Forschungen78 (1966), pp. 119-125. While admitting the importance of late classical connotations for understanding the sense of letargo, Dronke notes, «What is most important is that [Dante] uses the word letargo in a way strikingly opposed to that of Boethius and Alanus. The lethargy to which they refer is a failure of vision; Dante's is a supreme success. Theirs is a fatal obstacle to vision, while Dante's 'lethargy' is his condition of vision itself». Dronke then goes on to demonstrate how Dante's un punto solo recalls «Boethius' sense of punctum, his conception of eternity revealed in a moment» [125]. Apart from the studies of Bossard, Curtius, Witke, Dronke and Schmid, the only critical treatment of Dante's relation to Alanus seems to be that of A. Ciotti, Alano e Dante, Convivium n.s. 27 (1960), pp. 257-288. Ciotti takes as a point of departure Curtius' «intuizione di una compenetrazione reversibile» (p. 258) between vernacular and Medieval Latin literature. Ciotti studies parallels between the two poets without attempting to demonstrate Alanus' direct influence on Dante. In comparing Alanus' reference to Argus («speculator ut Argus», Anticl. Π.347) with Dante's «e li occhi d'Argo / se fosser vivi, sarebber cotali», Pg.xxxix. 95-96), Ciotti concludes: H contesto, quindi, ci dice che nell' Anticlaudianus il mito d'Argo non ha particolare rilievo e non έ assunto se non nei moduli della tradizione delle scuole retoriche, mentre nella Commedia esso έ assunto come modo esplicativo che esprime lo stato d'animo del poeta, e di qui si spiega la relativa insistenza nell'amplificazione dei termini descrittivi e insieme la ribadita sensazione di consapevole distacco fra la realtä mitica e la realtä psicologica [273]. Ciotti offers many points of comparison, usually with the intention of demonstrating that Dante is more 'creative' a poet, always insisting on the fundamental «importanza dell' utilizzazione dell' Anticlaudianus per una lettura storico-poetica della Commedia, nell' intento di individuare le componimenti della poesia sacra volgare e insieme di cogliere 1'atto creative del nuovo linguaggio poetico di Dante» [288]. Ciotti's essay does not contradict the conclusions here regarding the relationship of the Commedia to Alanus. Rather, the interpenetration which Ciotti mentions seems more complex than would appear from Ciotti's essay itself. 97

parallels here seem generally straightforward and depend on no particular interpretation of the Rose. The interpretation of this parallel remains to be discussed after the final two suggested parallels have been examined. The fourth parallel to be examined is the use of the Rose in both the Rose and the Commedia. Manfredi Porena thought that the celestial Rose of the Commedia answered the profane Rose of the French poem145. Such judgments are facile and can be confronted more usefully once it can be ascertained whether Dante's borrowings from the Rose are in any sense systematic. The rose was, after all, a common symbol in medieval iconography. Unless a textual parallel is in fact ascertainable, the occurrence of a rose in both works could simply be coincidental146. The key to understanding Dante's use of a rose at the end of the Commedia comes from his employment of the Gallicism oltraggio, which was a clear 'tag' from the Rose in late 13th-century It. In Pd.xxxiii Dante describes his final vision as an oltraggio·, he reacts like someone who has just awakened from a vivid dream: Da quinci innanzi il mio veder fu maggjo che Ί parlar mostra, ch'a tal vista cede, e cede la memoria a tan to oltraggio. Qual έ colüi che sognando vede, che dopo Ί sogno la passione impressa rimane, e l'altro a la mente non riede, Co tal son io. (Pd. xxxiii. 55-61)

The Gallicism oltraggio is first attested in It. in the Fiore, as, e.g., XIV.3, «tu faresti oltraggio/di non far grazia al meo domandamento», or CLXVI.8 «[la donna] si muova si a sesta/ch'al su' muovero non abbia punt' oltraggio», as well as CXCVII.12, CCXXTV.5, LXXXVI.4, CLII.ll and CXXXV.10 (see Antonio Land's remarks on oltraggio in the Enciclopedia dantesca, v. IV, p. 138).As Land pointed out, oltraggio is attested only in the Commedia and in the Fiore. It is therefore clear that oltraggio's currency during the last part of the 13th century is directly tied to the It. reception of the Rose. Τ. E. Hope listed the three occurrences of oltraggio in the Commedia (Pg.ii.94; xiii.73; Λί.χχχϊη.57)147 as the first examples of oltraggio in It. While this statement ignores the Fiore, the essential point remains that oltraggio entered the It. language specifically as a borrowing from the Rose. The two examples in Purgatory, the first in a remark by Casella, the second in an observation by Dante at being able to see the envious while not being seen by them, do not allude in any way to the Rose or any other O.F. work. In Pg.ii.94 and xiii.73 145 146

147

Köhler, op. cit., (1962), p.468, n.l. For the history of the iconography of the rose, see Ch. Joret, La Rose dans I'antiquiti et au moyen äge, (Paris, 1892); R. Schumacher-Wolfgarten, Rose, Lexikon der christlichen Ikonographie, v. III, cols. 563-568. For an examination of the Patristic treatment of the rose as it might relate to Dante, see Filippo Ermini, La Candida Rosa del Paradiso dantesco, II simbolo e la figura, Medio Evo Latino, Studi e Ricerche, (Modena, 1938), pp.237-382. Hope, op. cit. (1971), p. 112.

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the expression fare oltraggio has the sense (so Land) of «offesa» or «torto», a meaning which corresponds roughly to the O.F. meaning (given in TLVI. 1414-1418, «Übergriff, Maßlosigkeit, beleidigende Überheblichkeit, kränkende Ausschreitung in Wort oder Tat: superstitio [die mlat. Bedeutung bei Du Cange]»). One must add that the meaning of outrage in the Rose, where it occurs frequently, is closely tied to non-courtly behavior, particularly speech (whence the definition in FEW, XTV.9a as «paroles qui sont contraires ä l'honneur d'un chevalier [Roland-RoseL, Bartsch; Wace]»). Oltraggio in the Fiore reflects, not surprisingly, the courtly connotations which the word had in the Rose. Dante's use of oltraggio, particularly in Pg..ii.94 and xiii.73, reflect similar connotations but are innovative uses of the word (particularly Pg.xiii.73, «pareva, andando, fare oltraggio,/veggendo altrui, non essendo veduto») because they are not tied to any O.F. model. So much must be said before one considers Dante's use of oltraggio in Pd.xxxiii. Τ. E. Hope observed that early commentators often did not understand Dante's Gallicisms because they were 'rare' words in the sense that most of them require to the explained by his near contemporary 14th-century commentators148. A clear demonstration of Hope's argument is the gloss given by Benvenuto da Imola to oltraggio in Pd.xxxiii.57: «e cede la memoria a tanto oltraggio, idest, tantae excellentiae, quae vincit et superat intellectual nedum memoriam»149. One must repeat the supposition that the decline in O.F. influence in northern Italy after 1350 coincided historically with the inability (or unwillingness) of slightly younger contemporaries of Dante to see the larger vernacular literary context of the Commedia. The significance of outrage in the Rose might explain the appropriateness of oltraggio in the Commedia. Bel Accueil warns Amant not to commit outrage when he plucks the Rose for this outrage would be antithetical to the courtoisie commanded by Amor: tant fui du rosier apressiez qu'a mon vouloir poi les mains tendre au rainseaus por le bouton prendre. Bel Acueill por Dieu me priait que nul outrage fet n'i ait; et je Ii mis mout en couvant, por ce qu'il m'an priait souvant, que ja nule riens ne feroie for sa volenti et la moie. (w. 21,666-674)

Amant, in order to avoid pricking himself on the thorns of the rose-bush, proceeds soavet and does not break any of the branches, «car n'i vouloie riens bieder» (v. 21,684). Nevertheless, Amant fears Bel Accueil's inevitable reproach:

148 149

Hope, op. cit. (1973), p. 168. Benvenuto da Imola, op. cit., v. V., p. 515.

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si m'apele il de couvenant, et Ii faz grant desavenant, et suis trop outrageus, ce dit.

(w. 21,707-10)

(«D me rappela pourtant un engagement / et me dit que je n'agissais pas trös honndtement / et que j'allais trop loin, selon son sentiment», tr.Lanly)

This outrage represents the incorporation of the otherwise non-courtly act of plucking the Rose into the romance 'experience' of the poem. Courtoisie in itself was insufficient to win the Rose. Outrage - the plucking of the Rose - is juxtaposed against the courtly standards of Amor's commands which it transcends. Outrage constitutes the poetic culmination of the Rose. Dante's choice of oltraggio is not only an unmistakable allusion to the Rose, but also a clear connection of his overwhelming experience of first seeing - winning - the Celestial Rose to Amant's overwhelming experience of winning his Rose. Amant upon winning his Rose awakens from his dream; Dante upon 'winning' the Celestial Rose feels as though he had just awakened from a vivid dream which lingers on in his waking thoughts. The parallel of outrage!oltraggio is reinforced by the parallel of dreaming in both works, and demonstrates that Dante's use of the Celestial Rose was intended as a clear allusion to the Rose. The last example of textual parallels to be considered is Neptune's letargo to which Dante compares his own amazement and wonder at the end of Paradiso. This borrowing seems to combine Vergil's Fourth Eclogue and a passage from the speech of Ami (as well as several Boethian allusions, as Dronke pointed out). Jason's invention of navigation was a common figure in classical poetry for signaling the end of the Golden Age. Ovid, for example, notes in Met.1.96, that during the Golden Age, the pine tree never went down to the ocean nor did men know of any shores but their own: Nondum caesa suis, peregrinum ut viseret orbem, montibus in liquidas pinus descenderat undas nullaque mortales praeter sua litora norant. (1.94-96)

Jason's voyage meant the end of the Golden Age. Vergil, in the Fourth Eclogue, celebrates the return of the Golden Age in the appearance of a second Argo. The magnus ordo of the ultima aetas will witness the coming of a new Tiphys (the Argo's helmsman) and a new Argo as well: Alter erit tum Tiphys, et altera quae vehat Argo delectos heroas; erunt etiam altera bella, atque iterum ad Troiam magnus mittetur Achilles.

(w.34ff.)

Vergil ends the Fourth Eclogue by expressing his hope to be able to celebrate the puer during his lifetime. He boasts that such a celebration will outdo Orpheus and Linus, the first lyric poets of Greece, even though Calliopea was Orpheus' mother and Apollo was Linus' father. Pan himself will own himself conquered: Ο mihi tam longae maneat pars ultima vitae, spiritus et quantum sat erit tua dicere facta, non me carminibus vincat nec Thracius Orpheus,

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nec Linus, huic mater quamvis atque huic pater adsit, Orphei Calliopea, Lino formosus Apollo. Pan etiam, Arcadia mecum si iudice certet, Pan etiam, Arcadia dicat se iudice victum. (w. 53-59)

Vergil's poem connects explicitly the coming of the second Argo, the reestablishment of the Golden Age and the outdoing of Orpheus, which in terms of the poetological values of the Rose is the same as the dipassement of lyric at which the Rose aims. The Rose describes the amazement (O.F. esbahir) of Neptune and the other sea gods at the sight of the Argo: N'estoit lors nul pelerinage, n'issoit nus hors de son rivage por cerchier estrange contree; n'onques n'avoit la mer passee Jason, qui primes la passa, quant les navies compassa por la toison d'or aler querre. Bien cuida estre pris de guerre Neptunus, quant les vit nagier; Triton redut vis enragier, et Dorys et toutes ses filles. Por les merveilleuses semilles cuidierent tuit estre trahi, tant furent forment esbai des n6s qui par la mer voloient se con Ii marinier vouloient. (w. 9471-9486)

Dante's description of Neptune's letargo and wonderment (ammirar) seems to translate the O.F. esbahir, used to characterize the gods when they felt they had been taken prisoner by «les merveilleuses semilles»: Un punto solo m'6 maggior letargo che ventidnque secoli a la 'mpresa che f6 Nettun ammirar l'ombra d'Argo.

(Pd.xxxiii. 94-96)

Curtius discussed at some length the history of the motif of «das Staunen der Götter vor Argo»150. Curtius did not imply that Dante took this motif of astonishment from Jean de Meung. Curtius suggested that in the Rose the astonishment of the sea gods takes second place to their anger: Die Feindschaft der Meergottheiten ist Umbiegung des Autors [Jean de Meung], vielleicht attrahiert durch den Zorn Neptuns. Das Motiv des Staunens ([Langlois, v.] 9514 [=Lecoy, v. 9484]) wird dadurch zurückgedrängt [417].

To speak of the «Zorn Neptuns» misreads the line «Triton redut vis enragier». The meaning of redut does not imply that Neptune became angry first, hence Andre Lanly's translation, «Triton ä son tour devait manquer crever de rage». Neptune was frightened, Triton enraged. Moreover, Jean de Meung does not 150

Ernst Robert Curtius, Das Schiff der Argonauten, Kritische Essays zur europäischen Literatur, (Bern, 1950), pp.398-428; English translation, (Princeton, 1973), pp. 465-496.

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suggest anywhere in the passage that Neptune is angered. The import of the passage ist that of astonishment, as, e.g., v.9482, «les merveilleuses semilles» and v.9494, «tant furent forment esbaü» indicate. Curtius did not specifically address himself to the inevitable question whether the Rose was Dante's source. He noted that research into the transmission of other texts composed before the Rose which treat the motif of «das Staunen der Götter vor Argo» (like Joseph of Exeter's De hello Troiano, a poetic reworking of Dares' De excidio Troiae, or Valerius Flaccus' Argonautica), had not, at the time of his writing (1950), sufficiently elucidated the extent to which these texts were known [412, n.2]. Nevertheless, he claims: Joseph von Exeter und Jean de Meun haben nachweisbar Valerius Flaccus benutzt. Die Angabe, das Mittelalter habe ihn nicht gekannt (so zuletzt R.J.Getty in The Oxford Classical Dictionary 1949, 936) läßt sich nicht halten [414, n.l].

The first critical study of the transmission of the Argonautica was carried out by W.Wolfgang Ehlers in 1970151. The majority of MSS of the Argonautica were copied in the 15th century and are of humanist origin. Poggio's discovery in 1416 of the HITHERTO UNKNOWN Argonautica seems to have awakened humanist interest in the text. While a few earlier codices have survived, Manitius' remarks from 1889 bear repeating: «Valerius Flaccus ist im Alterthume fast verschollen, im Mittelalter ganz vergessen und auch in der Neuzeit nur wenig berücksichtigt worden»152. Valerius could not have been Dante's source, nor the probable source for the Rose passage in question. Joseph of Exeter is less likely a candidate as Dante's source because the small diffusion of De hello Troiano seems to have been limited geographically to England and northern France, with the exception of a single codex from the Steiermark. All four surviving MSS of the complete test and a single fragment were transcribed during the 13th century. Eight surviving poetic florilegia contain excerpts from the poem, but none of the excerpted passages give the portion of the text regarding Neptune (1.174ff., particularly w . 179-182)153. Joseph of Exeter might have been a possible source for Jean de Meung, but the exclusively northern European diffusion of the text would tend to exclude the possibility that he was a source for Dante154.

151

152

133

154

Wolfgang Ehlers, Untersuchungen zur handschriftlichen Überlieferung der Argonautica des C. Valerius Flaccus, (Munich, 1970). Μ. Manitius, Vorbilder und Nachahmer des Valerius Flaccus, Philologus 48 (1889), p.248. An examination of the textual transmission of De bello Troiano is found in: Joseph Iscanus, Werke und Briefe, ed. by Ludwig Gompf, (Leiden, 1970), pp. 22-55. Writing on the Argonauts in the Enciclopedia dantesca, (v. I, p. 364), Giorgio Padoan noted that Dante «non lesse certamente gli allora quasi inaccessibili Argonauti di Valerio Flacco». Guido Billanovich shows, in: *Veterum vestigia vatum», Italia medioevale e umanistica 1 (1958), p. 178, n.l, that certain verbal reminiscences of Valerius Flaccus are to be found in the works of the Paduan Lovato Lovati (d. 1309). Coluccio Salutati mentions Valerius Flaccus in a letter from 1398, the first apparent

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The Rose then might well be cited as the source of Dante's passage. Curtius failed to recognize the importance of astonishment in the Rose passage. This examination has not yet established the more profound connection of the Rose with the second Argo. The end of the Rose focuses on the dipassement of lyric, a recurrent theme throughout the entire Rose. Genius condemns those who follow Orpheus (here clearly not a figure of Christ) who not only do not known how to 'forge' correctly in the 'right forge', but also do not known how to write: et conferment leur regies males par exceptions anormales, quant Orpheüs veulent ansivre, qui ne sot arer ne escrivre ne forgier en la droite forge. (w. 19,619-23) (The connection between escrivre and forgier might exploit the ambiguity of the meaning of FABRICA, both "a smith's workshop, a forge" and "craft, art, trade", from which O . F . forgier and forge derive.) Amant, the poet-protagonist, who at the end of Guillaume's part compares himself to a peasant who sees his newly sown crop destroyed by «une male nue» (v. 3938), must at the same time write that poem - the Rose - which makes up for the prematurely destroyed 'harvest' of Guillaume and thereby answers Orpheus, the first lyric poet and pederast (a connection which is a literary commonplace since Ovid and whose significance could not have been lost on either Guillaume or Jean), as well as win the Rose so that he can 'forge' «en la droite forge». Dante's use of the Fourth Eclogue would conflate the Rose's use of Argo and its seperate treatment of Orpheus (connected to the dipassement of lyric). Following the Rose, Dante's wonder is compared to that of Neptune at the sight of the first Argo as though the Beatific Vision which Dante now beholds constitutes the altera Argo of the Fourth Eclogue. Thus Dante's poetic triumph is simultaneously an extension of the poetic triumph of Vergil and of the Rose: «non me carminibus vincat nec Thracius Orpheus». Naturally Dante's letargo - his amazement which serves as his source of poetic celebration - must be greater than Neptune's if Dante's poetic victory is to surpass Vergil's celebration of his own poetic powers in the Fourth Eclogue. The parallels studied here prompt several conclusions. Dante transposes the pairing of the vergier de Deduit and the biau pare into the Terrestrial Paradise and the celestial Rose. Scholars have argued that in the Rose the second garden undercuts the first. Erich Köhler in his essay Narcisse, la Fontaine d'Amour et Guillaume de Lorris, (in: L'Humanisme mödiöval dans les litt6ratures romanes du ΧΠ® au XTVe sifccle, ed. A.Fourrier, [Paris 1964], pp. 147-166), discussed documented reference to Valerius Flaccus. Poggio seems to have been responsible for reviving interest in the text. Neither Langlois nor Lecoy indicate a source for the passage in the Rose under consideration here. The argument that the Rose is Dante's source seems to be the most probable solution at the present stage of research into the sources of both poems. Moreover the generic reasons for the Rose's being the source for Dante increase the probability of precisely such a borrowing. 103

this opposition, and, I submit, misinterpreted the opposition by failing to see how important the motif of continuation is in the Rose (w. 10,554f., «Cist avra le romanz si chier/qu'il le voudra tout parfenir»), Köhler's thesis is: «Le second auteur a voulu röfuter l'ceuvre du premier (...) il a faussd le thfeme du Roman de la Rose» (pp. 155-56). The unity of the Rose has been a recurrent problem for scholars. The discussion here has tried to show that the Rose's unity derives from Jean de Meung's application of the translatio topos. Dante's pairing of the two gardens suggests that Dante's reception of the Rose was consistent with the values of the translatio topos which the conjoined Rose emblematizes. The kind of opposition within continuity which characterizes the relationship between the vergier de Deduit and the biau pare governs the relationship of the Rose and the Commedia. Whether Dante approves or disapproves of the content of the Rose, he clearly seems to be 'continuing' the Rose in the Commedia. In the Rose the truthfulness of Amant's dream - a lyrical fable - is conflated with Christian truth - the fable of the Incarnation. At the same time the Rose welds various poetic genres together. The resulting poetic artifact constitutes a defense of the integrity of verse discourse through time and space, a notion which prominently informs O.F. literature and which is the central focus of Dante's meditations in DVE. This conflation in the Rose, which subsumes the tensions, oppositions and parallels between the vergier de Deduit and the biau pare, seems to anticipate Dante's use of the vergier de Deduit in the Terrestrial Paradise and of the biau pare in the final beatific vision of Paradiso. The belief in the antagonism between the two Roses of the two poems, a perspective which admits implicitly, if not parallels between the Commedia and the Rose, at least the importance of the French poem for Dante, needs to be reevaluated. The Rose seems to have been poetologically important to Dante because of its elaboration of the translatio topos. While Dante may not have accepted the moral implications of much of the content of the Rose, he remains nevertheless the stout defender of the profound affinities between the members of the tripharium ydioma. Positing an opposition between the Rose and the Commedia does not account for the complexity of the Rose's influence nor for the notion of poetic continuity which it recurrently stresses. Dante's transposition of the vergier de Deduit and the biau pare would point to a systematic assimilation not only of the poetological values of the Rose but also of a part of the Rose's symmetrical organization. By ending the Commedia with the vision of a Rose, Dante connects his poem to a vernacular narrative tradition whose 13th-century culmination was the Rose. The problem still remains that Dante, otherwise explicit and detailed about his use of various authors, is completely silent about the Rose15S. This silence may stem from a judgment by Dante of 155

Dante's silence regarding the Rose may be comparable to the Rose's silent borrowings from Chrötien. The songes/mengonges rhyme is first found in Yvain, in Calogrenant's 'prologue' to his own first-person account: Et qui or me voldra entandre,

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the Rose's morality as distinct from its poetic values. While the 'translation' of Oiseuse into the figures of Leah and Matelda may represent a moral correction of Oiseuse, Dante's use of a double to translate the single figure from the Rose bespeaks the truthfulness of the Rose's dream as a format for poetic discourse. Dante's reaction is thus highly complex and somewhat ambiguous. The translatio topos provides helpful insights into Dante's reception of the auctores. The few parallels from the Rose in the Commedia show Dante incorporating the Rose's reception of an auctor into his own reception of that same auctor. There remain many cases of Dante's using a classical source without a parallel in the Rose. Such examples can be important in showing the affinities between the Rose and the Commedia even when no dependence is detected. The Rose and the Commedia both strive to authenticate the auctores in terms of the needs and demands of vernacular composition. The profound analogies between the two poems as confirmed in the textual parallels would suggest that the Commedia needs to be read in the context of the preceding romance vernacular tradition as it culminated in the Rose. Any reading of the Commedia which does not take this context into account must be the poorer for having failed to do so.

euer et oroilles me doit randre, car ne vuel pas parier de songe, ne de fable, ne de manjonge. II m'avint plus a de set anz que je, seus come paisanz, aloe querant aventures. (w. 169-175) Michelle Freeman has demonstrated how important Chr6tien's 'Blood-Drops' Scene' in Perceval is for understanding the Narcissus scene in the Rose, a literary dependence which is never acknowledged. Finally, Amant's 'adoration' of the Rose, like a fervent pilgrim adoring relics, recalls Lancelot's adoration of Gueniövre's hairs as well as his genuflection before her bed: et puis vint au lit la rei'ne, si l'aore et se li ancline, car an nul cors saint ne croit tant. (w. 4651-53) Perhaps these borrowings were so clear for the contemporary reader that an explicit acknowledgement would have been superfluous, which would in turn imply a close poetological affinity between Chrdtien and Guillaume de Lorris, which recalls Jean de Meung celebration of Guillaume's 'continuing' his predecessors in the central passage of the conjoined Rose.

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Conclusion

Several conclusions emerge from the preceding discussion. Ascertaining Dante's possible authorship of the Fiore is secondary to addressing the more important question of the direct reception of the Rose in the Commedia. In all likelihood, however, Dante did not write the Fiore, for it seems on the basis of its diction and format to date from the generation immediately preceding Dante. In all probability Dante knew the Fiore for he used it in the Commedia. Contini's best reminiscences - if accepted, and this is no small precondition are insufficient to prove Dante's authorship and point rather to the highly attenuated presence of the Fiore in the Commedia. Dante's acquaintance with the Fiore can, however, be established on the basis of two other important pieces of evidence, the parallels between the ipocriti of //.xxiii and the portrayal of Falsembiante (first noted by Ezio Raimondi156), and Dante's use of highly 'literary' Gallicisms which also occur in the Fiore, such as oltraggio (Pg.ii.94, xiii.73). These textual reminiscences show that Dante's utilization of the Fiore is comparable to his use of texts from other authors. Contini, in attributing the Fiore to Dante, contended moreover that the Commedia could be understood as a palinode of the Fiore. It is significant that both the borrowings uncovered by Ezio Raimondi and the shared use of certain Gallicisms do not admit of the expected characteristics of a palinode. When Dante corrects himself in the Commedia, as in the question regarding the origin of moonspots, he is remarkably direct. It appears moreover that Dante had not read the Rose before at least 1304 or 1305 when he wrote DVE. Dante was simply too sensitive an observer of vernacular literature in DVE to have deliberately passed over the Rose in silence there, presuming, of course, that the Rose had made a significant impact on him by this time. Since the Rose is first textually present in the Commedia in the Earthly Paradise, it would seem that the Rose influenced Dante directly at a relatively late date. Of course

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Ezio Raimondi, I canti bolognesi dell' Inferno dantesco, in: Dante e Bologna nei tempi di Dante, (Bologna, 1967), p. 242: «Intanto, attraverso il Fiore,si έ anche fatto ritorno all' episodio degli ipocriti danteschi e al tono del racconto che Ii presenta, cosi perfido, in certo gioco di dtazioni che si spinge sino al linguaggio evangelico». Raimondi's examples were used by Michelangelo Picone to prove Dante's authorship of the Fiore.

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Dante could have read the Rose earlier. The important thing is that the Rose first appears textually in the Earthly Paradise. Dante therefore does not seem to have been motivated to write his Commedia as a direct answer either to the O.F. Rose or to the It. Fiore. The important word in preceding sentence is «direct». Clearly the poetological concerns which motivated Dante in DVE which in turn found their poetic elaboration in the Commedia were connected to the late 13th-century It. reception of O. F. literature in general and of the Rose in particular. This positive reception is another argument against Contini's claim that the Commedia is a palinode of the Fiore and an 'anti-parody' of the Rose. Dante's most important debt to O.F. literature in general, and to the Rose in particular, is a poetological one. The 13th century witnessed a sustained decline in the importance of the classical authors: in a very real sense Vergil had become «per lungo silenzio fioco». Even Brunetto Latini, to whom Dante owed his knowledge of Boethius and Cicero, fails to recognize Vergil in If.xv. This historical situation meant that Dante's recuperation of earlier poetic activity in Latin, Pr. and O.F. entailed incorporating their poetological values with his own poetic needs and resources in order to forge a poetic vehicle which continued and surpassed them. Dante was not so much interested in the redemption of Vergil's soul as in the redemption of Vergil's poetry for the sake of re-establishing the continuity of poetic activity throughout history within the linguistic and literary context of early 14th-century Italy. The occurrence of the translatio topos in O.F. literature, culminating in its use in the Rose, and the influence of this topos on late 13th-century It. poets, particularly Brunetto Latini and the Fiore poet, coincide with the overwhelmingly positive reception of the Rose as an incentive to vernacular composition. The advantage of this investigation of the Rose is that one can appreciate the historical poetological impact of the Rose regardless of how one chooses to interpret the moral 'message' of the Rose. Indeed, the poetological significance of the Rose appears to have outweighed, at least as far as late 13th- and early 14th-century Italy is concerned, its possible moral impact. Moreover, the positive reception of the translatio topos by late 13th-century It. poets precludes for all intents and purposes the kind of hostility implicit in a palinode or 'anti-parody'. Interpreting the verifiable presence of the Rose in the Commedia is facilitated by recalling the poetological affinities between the two works. It was appropriate for Dante to mark this affinity by casting his final vision of God in the form of a Celestial Rose of the Blessed who eternally gaze at their Lover. Indeed, Dante frames his experience of Paradise with allusions to the Rose, for his entrance into the Earthly Paradise parallels Amant's entrance into the vergier de Deduit. The Rose's significance for Dante lies both in the borrowings ascertainable in the Commedia and in the convergence of poetological values between the two great works. The values of the translatio topos, which the Rose emblematized, championed and elaborated, consistently attracted It. poets in the late 13th and early 14th century and found a positive reception in the 107

Commedia. Dante's reading of the Rose consisted in his being able to put its values of literary creation in the service of It. vernacular eloquence. A better understanding of Dante's debt to O. F. literature and to the Rose should allow for a more profound appreciation of Dante's poetic creativity within its vernacular narrative context.

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Selected Bibliography of Works Cited

Primary Sources: Albertus Magnus, De caelo et mundo, ed. by Paul Hoßfeld, in: Opera omnia, Tomus V, General Editor, Bernhard Geyer, Münster i.W. 1971. Averroes, Sermo de Substantia Orbis, Venice 1562; reprinted, Frankfurt a. M. 1962. Benvenuto da Imola, Comentum super Dantis Aldigherij Comoediam, ed. by J. P. Lacaita, Florence 1887, 5 vols. Boccaccio, Giovanni, De casibus virorum illustrium, ed. by J. Thierry de Beauvais, Paris 1520; reprinted with introduction by Louis Brewer Hall, Gainesville, Florida 1962. - Vita di Dante e difesa delta poesia, ed. by Carlo Muscetta, Rome 1963. Boncompagno da Signa, Rhetorica novissima, in: Scripta Anecdota Antiquissimorum Glossatorum (Bibliotheca Iuridica Medii Aevi), ed. by Augusto Gaudenzi, Bologna 1892, II. 251-297. Chr6tien de Troyes, Le Roman de Perceval, ou le Conte du Graal, ed. by William Roach, Textes littdraires frangais, 71, Geneva 1956. - Le Chevalier de la Charrette, ed. by Mario Roques, Classiques fran?ais du Moyen Age, 86, Paris 1958. Christine de Pisan, Jean Gerson, Jean de Montreuil, Gontier et Pierre Col, Le Dibatsur le «Roman de la Rose», ed. by Eric Hicks, Paris 1977. Dante Alighieri, II Convivio, ed. by G. Busnelli and G. Vandelli, Introduction by Michele Barbi, 2nd. Edition by Antonio Enzo Quaglio, Opere di Dante, Nuova Edizione, directed by V. Branca et al., vols. IV and V, Florence 1964, 2 vols. - De vulgari eloquentia, ed. by Aristide Mango and Pier Giorgio Ricci, 3rd. edition, Opere di Dante, Nuova Edizione, General Editor, M. Barbi, vol. VI, Florence 1968. - La Divina Commedia secondo I'antica vulgata, ed. by Giorgio Petrocchi, Rome 1966-68, 4 vols. - La Divina Commedia, ed. by C.H. Grandgent and Charles S. Singleton, Cambridge, Massachusetts 1972. - The Divine Comedy, trans, with commentary by Charles S. Singleton, Bollingen Series 80, Princeton 1970-75, 6 vols. - The Literary Criticism of Dante Alighieri, trans, and ed. by Robert S. Haller, Lincoln, Nebraska 1973. - Vita nuova, Rime, ed. by Fredi Chiapelli, Milan 1965. Eneas, Texte critique, ed. by J.J. Salverda de Grave, Bibliotheca normannica, IV, Halle a.S. 1891. L'Entrie d'Espagne, ed. by Antoine Thomas, Paris 1913, 2 vols. II Fiore e U Detto d'Amore, ed. by Ernesto Parodi, Florence 1922. Guido de Pisa, Guido da Pisa's Expositiones et Glose super Comediam Dantis or

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Commentary on Dante's Inferno, ed. by V. Cioffari, Albany 1975. Guido delle Colonne, Historie destructionis Troiae, ed. by Ν. E. Griffin, Cambridge, Massachusetts 1936. Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meung, Le Roman de la Rose, ed. by Fdlix Lecoy, Classiques fran^ais du Moyen Age, 92, 95, 98, Paris 1965-70, 3 vols.; translated into modern French by Andr6 Lardy, Paris 1971-75, 2 vols, in 5. Historia Critica Scholiastorum Latinorum, ed. by W. H. D. Suringar, Lugduni Batavorum [Lyons] 1834-35, 2 vols. Isidore of Seville, Isidori Hispalensis Etymologiarum sive Originum libri XX, ed. by W.M. Lindsay, Oxford 1911. Jean de Meung, Le Testament, vol. IV of: Le Roman de la Rose par Guillaume de Lorris et Jehan de Meung, ed. by Μ. Μέοη, Paris 1814, 4 vols. Joseph Iscanus, Werke und Briefe, ed. by Ludwig Gompf, Leiden 1970. Latini, Brunetto, La Rettorica, ed. by Francesco Maggini, preface by Cesare Segre, Florence 1968. - Li Livres dou Tresor, ed. by Francis James Carmody, University of California Publications in Modern Philology 22, Berkeley 1948. Lemaire de Beiges, Jean, La Concorde des dewc langages, ed. by Jean Frappier, Paris 1947. Lyrics of the Trobadours and Trouvires, An Anthology and a History, ed. by Frederick Goldin, New York 1973. Nicolas of Verona, Die Pharsale des Nicolas von Verona, ed. by Hermann Wahle, Ausgaben und Abhandlungen aus dem Gebiete der romanischen Philologie, 80, Marburg 1888. The Old French Johannes Translation of the Pseudo-Turpin Chronicle, ed. by Ronald Walpole, Berkeley 1976. Le Origini, Testi latini, italiani, provenzali e franco-italiani, ed. by Antonio Viscardi et al„ Milan 1956. Petrarca, Francesco, Poesie minori del Petrarca, Milan 1829-31, 2 vols. - Le Familiari, General Editor, Vittorio Rossi, Florence 1933-42, 4 vols. Poemetti del Duecento, II Tesoretto, II Fiore, L'Intelligenza, ed. by Guiseppe Petronio, Turin 1951. Polo, Marco, I Viaggi di Marco Polo, ed. by A