Toscana Bilingue. Storia sociale della traduzione medievale / Bilingualism in Medieval Tuscany
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Edited by:
Antonio Montefusco
Between 1260 and 1430 Tuscany, and notably Florence, saw the rise of a thriving translating activity. This activity was directed not only towards the Classics, thus contributing to a renewed approach with classical antiquity. Several texts were written and later translated within a short span of time: they include works expressing a great variety of interest (epistolography and rhetoric, spiritual exercises, moral encyclopedias, scientific literature). Many of these texts circulated within linguistic trails that were complex and not always straightforward (from French to Tuscan vernacular; from Tuscan vernacular to Latin; from Tuscan vernacular to French, etc.). Taken as a whole and inspected through the lens of social and intellectual history, such works show the great novelty of Medieval Tuscan culture, in which translating gained a pivotal role and acquired high status and credit. The series "Toscana Bilingue / Bilingualism in Medieval Tuscany" (connected to the ERC Starting Grant project directed by Antonio Montefusco) aims to study for the first time this set of texts. Its goal is to provide a fresh perspective encompassing the social history of medieval translation before Humanism.
Topics
This volume is dedicated to the study of medieval ars dictaminis. Analyzing several manuscript witnesses, it sheds light on the historical contextualization of the phenomenon and examines the close relationship between ars dictaminis and the political and social system of that time.
The contributions gathered in this volume discuss the complex topic of translating in medieval Italy from an interdisciplinary perspective, combining the philological approach with a detailed social and cultural analysis. The authors discuss, among other topics, translations of ‘classical’ and particularly so-called ‘modern’ texts, the distribution of knowledge and languages, and the social history of translating.
Notwithstanding an impressive amount of secondary literature, an exhaustive study has been never devoted to the twelve letters written by Dante Alighieri after his banishment from Florence (1302–1315). This book answers to this important need of Dante Studies, offering an important tool for the increasing community of specialists interested in Dante’s works and posterity linked to the seventh centenary of his death (2021). A section is devoted to study in depth the theory and practice of the dictamen of the age in relationship with the concrete style of Dante’s texts. A preliminary overview is provided by Latin Philologists and Paleographers on the subject of the manuscript trasmission envisaging the problems dealing with the critical editions of the texts.
Example of political communication realized by a layman, the papers gathered in this volume intend to offer a new reading and interpretation of these important letters, studying them in their socio-cultural context.
Francesco da Barberino, a contemporary of Dante (1264–1348), was a Florentine notary. Remembered for the first testimony of the circulation of the Commedia, he is also known for an ample and composite literary production, both in Latin and the vernacular. Francesco spent part of his life as notary at the service of the bishops of Florence, so that his works reveal a remarkable culture, influenced by his juridical training and notarial career. In particular, his allegorical and didactical poem, called Documenta Amoris, represents an interesting case of a complex interplay of texts and pictorial illustrations. In fact, the work includes a vernacular poem alongside a translation and a commentary both in Latin, and it is also accompanied by a series of illuminations: all the texts and the whole paratextual structure derive directly from the author himself, as witnessed by two Vatican MSS (Barb. 4076 and 4077). Composed at the same time, the Documenta Amoris are a sort of orthodox contrappunto of the Commedia, in which Dante’s linguistic experimentation is substituted by Francesco’s rigid bilingualism. This book provides one of the first interpretations of this fundamental figure of 14th-century Florentine culture.
