This article considers the characterization of blessed souls in Dante’s Commedia (1307–21) and Petrarch’s Canzoniere (c. 1356–74) and Triumphi (c. 1352–74). It argues that eschatological realism – the detailed representation of souls in the afterlife – lies at the heart of these three works, each of which depicts a deceased beloved who now resid…[Read more]

This special issue of the Italianist collects ten essays that consider the multiple manifestations of realism and idealism in Italy from the Trecento to the present day. Notions of the ‘real Italy’ (and of ‘Italian realism’) remain fundamental for scholars working in various disciplines, while the exploration of the ideal Italies constru…[Read more]

This article demonstrates a systematic connection between the novelty of Petrarch’s authorship and his self-definition as an exile. Petrarch employs the unusual term exilium/esilio to substantiate his unprecedented claim that literature is a legally valid officium (civic role). Following Dante, Petrarch grounds his exilic authorship in the C…[Read more]

Concentrates on the brief period of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s career between 1966 and 1969 when he dedicated a significant portion of his energy to the theater. Argues that these years contain Pasolini’s most direct engagement with bourgeois Italian culture: he largely drops his use of dialect in favor of Standard Italian, he sets his plays in mod…[Read more]

This article challenges the established reading of Atti impuri and Amado mio, Pasolini’s early unfinished novels about young homosexual love, as diaristic. Previous accounts of the Friulan novels have largely ignored the fact that their final redactions were drawn up in Rome, where the author had fled from Friuli in January 1950 in the wake of a s…[Read more]

The essay examines closely the many and varied metaphors of Convivio 1 in relation to its “content.” This approach contrasts with most prior work on the Convivio, which views it as a philosophical work, and pays little attention its form or rhetoric. Instead, the article shows that the Convivio draws on a variety of disciplines in orer to…[Read more]

This article identifies the Augustinian motive of peregrinatio (pilgrimage/exile) as fundamental to the Vita nova, both thematically and at the level of narrative structure. Although Dante himself would not experience banishment from Florence in 1302, this early work establishes him as a vernacular poet whose authority stems from a marginal and…[Read more]