Between rediscovery and recreation: Renaissance accounts of medieval Italian vernacular literary tradition (1476-1530)

ended

ReMedIt aims to provide the first historical reconstruction of the evolution of views on the medieval Italian vernacular literary tradition in Italy during the period that leads to the formation of an established canon of vernacular literary authors (1476-1530). The project focuses on the reception of the poetic tradition, in particular the extensive Italian lyric tradition (c. 1230-c. 1330) preceding Petrarch, one encompassing over two hundred authors. The project interrogates three main interrelated research strands: 1) the differing value judgements concerning the vernacular poetic past before Petrarch, both implicit ones (such as the selection of poets, their ordering, and the amount of attention afforded them in different poetic anthologies) and explicit comments and judgements; 2) the complex processes – material, interpretative, exegetical and cultural – that bring about the recovery of the medieval lyric tradition and generate knowledge related to it; and 3) the literary influence that this tradition exercised upon verse production during the same period 1476-1530 in the output of nine authors. In order to reconstruct the differing views regarding the genesis and historical development of the earlier Italian literary tradition, the project offers a novel interdisciplinary approach. It does this by integrating the study of how Renaissance poets were influenced by thirteenth- and fourteenth-century authors with an assessment of their critical reception and of the contemporary processes of recovery of their texts. In doing so, ReMedIt will offer a fuller and enriched understanding of this seminal period in the development of the history and codification of the vernacular literary tradition, thereby providing a case study that will be valuable for the study of other national literatures. Through a carefully constructed training-through-research programme the experienced researcher will expand her research interests broadening her chronological range.