Italian Readers of Ovid from the Origins to Petrarch: Responding to a Versatile Muse

360 Pages·2020·3.081 MB·English

by  Julie Van Peteghem

Italian Readers of Ovid from the Origins to Petrarch
Medieval and Renaissance
Authors and Texts
Editor-in-Chief
Francis G. Gentry (Emeritus Professor of German, Penn State University)
Editorial Board
Teodolinda Barolini (Lorenzo Da Ponte Professor of Italian, Columbia
University)
Cynthia Brown (Professor of French, University of California, Santa Barbara)
Marina Brownlee (Robert Schirmer Professor of Spanish and Professor of
Comparative Literature, Princeton University)
Keith Busby (Douglas Kelly Professor of Medieval French, University of
Wisconsin-Madison)
Jason Harris (Director of the Centre for Neo-Latin Studies,
University College Cork)
Alastair Minnis (Professor of English, Yale University)
Brian Murdoch (Professor of German, Stirling University)
Jan Ziolkowski (Arthur Kingsley Porter Professor of Medieval Latin, Harvard
University and Director, Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection)
volume 24
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/mrat
Italian Readers of Ovid
from the Origins to Petrarch
Responding to a Versatile Muse
By
Julie Van Peteghem
LEIDEN | BOSTON
This publication was supported by the Book Completion Award Program, The Office of Research, The City
University of New York (2019–2020) and the PSC-CUNY Research Award Program, The Research Foundation,
The City University of New York (2015–2016, 2018–2019).
Parts of Chapters 2 and 4 have been published as “The Vernacular Roots of Dante’s Reading of Ovid in the
Commedia,” Italian Studies 73, no. 3 (2018): 223–39.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Van Peteghem, Julie, author.
Title: Italian readers of Ovid from the origins to Petrarch : responding to
 a versatile muse / Julie Van Peteghem.
Other titles: Medieval and Renaissance authors and texts ; v. 24.
Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill, 2020. | Series: Medieval and
 Renaissance authors and texts, 09257683 ; vol. 24 | Includes
 bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020002052 (print) | LCCN 2020002053 (ebook) |
 ISBN 9789004421684 (hardback) | ISBN 9789004421691 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Ovid, 43 B.C.–17 A.D. or 18 A.D.—Appreciation—Italy. |
 Italian literature—To 1400—History and criticism.
Classification: LCC PA6537 .V36 2020 (print) | LCC PA6537 (ebook) |
 DDC 873/.01—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020002052
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020002053
Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface.
ISSN 0925-7683
ISBN 978-90-04-42168-4 (hardback)
ISBN 978-90-04-42169-1 (e-book)
Copyright 2020 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.
Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi,
Brill Sense, Hotei Publishing, mentis Verlag, Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh and Wilhelm Fink Verlag.
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Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Abbreviations ix
List of Figures and Tables x
Part 1
Writers as Readers
Introduction: “Ovid, the philosopher who wrote books about love” 3
1 Ovidius – Ovidi – Ovide – Ovidio: A History of Reading Ovid in the
Due- and Trecento 13
1.1 Reading Ovid: The Material and Cultural Contexts 14
1.2 The Italian Readers of Ovid Turned Writers 48
1.3 Beyond Intertextuality? How to Think about Ovid’s Influence 55
Part 2
Readers as Writers
2 Examples (Not) to Follow: The First Italian Ovidian Poems and Their
Occitan Models 73
2.1 Better and More: Ovidian Similes in Vernacular Poetry 74
2.2 Ovid’s Book that Does Not Lie (to Troubadours) 98
2.3 Reading and Discussing Ovidio 107
2.4 Conclusion 121
3 Something Old, Something New: Dante, Cino da Pistoia, and Ovid 124
3.1 “Per Ovidio parla Amore”: First, the Vita nuova 125
3.2 Dante’s petrose: Testing Out New Techniques 133
3.3 Cino da Pistoia, Dante, and Ovid on Love, Myth, and Exile 144
3.4 Conclusion 167
4 Ovid in Dante’s Commedia 169
4.1 In Search of Dante’s (Copy of) Ovid 172
4.2 Dante’s Ovidius: Close Readings of the Latin Text 181
4.3 Dante’s Ovidio: The Vernacular Roots of Dante’s Reading of Ovid 198
vi Contents
4.3.1 Ovidian Similes from Lyric Poetry to the Commedia 199
4.3.2 Discussing Ovidian Poetics from Lyric Poetry to the
Commedia 209
4.4 Conclusion 220
5 Petrarch’s Scattered Ovidian Verses 223
5.1 Petrarch’s Ovid Found 224
5.2 Just Like Apollo, Just Like Daphne: Similes and Identification 235
5.3 Metamorphosis as a Narrative Principle 264
5.4 Conclusion 286
Bibliography 289
Index Locorum 324
Index of Manuscripts 331
General Index 332
Acknowledgments
I want to thank the institutions and the people who supported me in writ-
ing this book. Two semesters of release time at Hunter College, CUNY, of-
fered the necessary time for research and writing. Additional support came
from two PSC-CUNY Research Awards and the CUNY Office of Research Book
Completion Award. Parts of Chapters 2 and 4 have been published as “The
Vernacular Roots of Dante’s Reading of Ovid in the Commedia,” Italian Studies
73, no. 3 (2018): 223–39. The Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana and Biblioteca
Riccardiana in Florence, Italy gave permission to reprint images from their
collections in this book. I could not have written this book without the assis-
tance of the Interlibrary Loan Office at Hunter College Libraries, Columbia
University Libraries, and the MaRLI Program at the New York Public Library.
I thank Francis Gentry for accepting this book in the MRAT series, and for
his most generous support throughout. At Brill, Irini Argirouli, Alessandra
Giliberto, and Peter Buschman guided me expertly through the publication
process. The anonymous reader comments have made this book better, and
for that I am very grateful. Deborah Aschkenes was again the perfect editor,
and Alberto Gelmi and Katherine Volkmer provided invaluable help with the
translations and the index of this book. All remaining errors are my own.
I first started to write about Dante and Ovid in Teodolinda Barolini’s seminar
on Dante’s Divina Commedia. Both the project and I have undergone quite the
transformation since that first Dante course, and I thank Teo for her steadfast
guidance and honest advice she has given me over the years, and the outstand-
ing example as a scholar, mentor, and person she continues to be.
My digital humanities project Intertextual Dante, which functions as a
companion site to especially Chapter 4 of this book, would not exist without
Teodolinda Barolini, Rebecca Kennison, Mark Newton, and especially Jack
Donovan, who coded and designed the project’s reading tool. I thank Columbia
University Libraries for their continued support.
Presenting on my research at Hunter and beyond and teaching some of
the material in this book to the students in the Italian Program has been very
helpful. At the Department of Romance Languages at Hunter I found the most
welcoming and interesting colleagues and students. I especially thank Michael
Taormina for his guidance during the final phase of this book, and Lucrecia
Aviles and Michele Stetz for their cheer. Monica Calabritto and Paolo Fasoli,
my colleagues in the Italian Program, are the most supportive and generous
mentors, and have become dear friends.
viii Acknowledgments
Working with Teodolinda Barolini, Meredith Levin (my favorite librarian),
Akash Kumar, and Grace Delmolino on Digital Dante perfectly complements
the solitariness of writing. The ACERT community at Hunter also reminds
me that there is more than Ovid and medieval Italian literature. I also thank
Daniela D’Eugenio, Stefania Porcelli, Paola Ureni, and Gloria Yu Yang for their
friendship and support.
Bedankt aan de families Van Peteghem en Oppeel voor het warme welkom
dat jullie mij altijd geven. De vriendschap van Vincent en Evelyn, en Elisa en
Pieter doet zoveel deugd. Mijn ouders hebben mij altijd gesteund en in mij
geloofd. Ik kan hen niet genoeg bedanken.
My deepest thanks go to mijn lief Richard, the most versatile person I know,
for his love and support in everything I do.