This thesis examines the role of dialogic processes in representations of conversion narratives and expressions of poetic subjectivity across the works of four poets: Guittone d’Arezzo (c.1235-1294), Guido Guinizzelli (c.1230-1276), Guido Cavalcanti (c.1255-1300) and Dante Alighieri (1265-1321). The introduction proposes a definition of ‘dialogic processes’ drawing on theoretical models of performativity and dialogism. It presents the usefulness of these approaches to the analysis of narratives of conversion and accounts of subjectivity in poetry. Chapter 1 analyses Guittone’s conversion poetics in light of these processes and seeks to complicate the teleology of his narrative of self. Chapter 2 examines the poetry of Guinizzelli and Cavalcanti, first establishing the ‘poetic conversion’ of Guinizzelli in dialogue with his own and others’ poetry. It then examines Cavalcanti’s physiological performance of a polyphonic subjectivity and how far this poetic expression partakes in the dialogic processes previously discussed in relation to religiously inflected writing. Chapters 3 and 4 will explore the manifestations of these phenomena of dialogue and performance in Dante’s oeuvre with particular focus on the Commedia as a key site for intertextual interaction both with his own earlier texts and with the texts (and figures) of the other poets under discussion. These chapters will seek to reopen the teleological closure which Dante tries to impose on his vernacular predecessors, as well as on his own works. The weight of critical engagement with Dante’s predecessors has treated them as sources or reference points for Dante’s own praxis. I aim to consider Guittone, Guinizzelli and Cavalcanti on their own terms and in dialogue with one another before approaching Dante through these poets, thus reconstructing the networks of poetic dialogue in late medieval Italy, and situating Dante firmly within a dialogic tradition of narratives of self and conversion.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:629529 |
| Date | January 2014 |
| Creators | Bowe, David James Alexander |
| Contributors | Gragnolati, Manuele |
| Publisher | University of Oxford |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:ae039556-3805-42b8-90ed-bcc4b065d4da |
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