Lyric Authority: Editing and Rewriting Dante’s Lyric Poetry (14th – 16th c.)

ended

Dante’s worldwide reception and the construction of his figure as an Author (auctor&auctoritas, i.e., “creator” and “cultural authority”) have been traditionally explored from the point of view of his masterpiece, the Commedia, and of its commentaries, illustrations, and translations. And yet, Dante’s status results from a longue durée process in which his lyric poetry plays a major part in its own right. LyrA will explore the physical act of copying, editing, and printing Dante’s lyric poetry from the 14th to the early 16th century in Italy through the study of multi-text and multi-author volumes, both manuscripts and early printed editions. In the history of Dante’s poems’ circulation and reception, a field in itself of significant scholarly debate, the crucial function of editors and anthologists has been neglected. LyrA addresses this omission, expanding our knowledge of the cultural heritage bequeathed by Dante and in his name. It will explore the ways in which ‘national poets’ are born through editing and rewriting, and how major authors influence cultural development. The prints and manuscripts to be explored have mainly been treated as containers of texts in terms of textual transmission, rather than being examined as textual objects with an independent semantic value. Likewise, we lack entirely an analysis of the cultural interactions between different Italian regions in the canonization of Dante as lyric poet, and thus as an auctoritas, in particular the interaction between Tuscany and the Veneto. LyrA is notable for its interdisciplinary methodology, using material philology alongside textual criticism, literary history and criticism, codicology, and book history. Indeed, the analysis of the material features of books offers a fresh perspective from which to examine the main critical discourses emerging from Dante’s reception as a lyric writer: the advent of the Author as a distinct cultural figure, and the birth of the songbook as a literary genre.