Dissertation on Birds of Prey and the Sport - the Falconry Heritage ...

medieval Italian literature is the recently published contribution of Daniela Boccassini, a
book entitled I1 volo della mente. Falconeria e sojia nel mondo mediterraneo: Islam,
Federico 11, ante.^ Her main interest is in the development of falcons as intellectual
signs and the view of the sport of falconry as a quest for spiritual love or wisdom. In
contrast, this present work concerns primarily how the relationship, both real and
symbolic, between falcons and nobility influences their use in the secular world of love
poetry and tales of society.
This dissertation looks at the reasons for which and the ways in which images of
falcons, hawks, and the sport of falconry are used in medieval Italian literature. It seeks to
show that the use of these images changes in Italy over the course of the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries. The courtly love symbolism that the falcon and its kind evoke in
French, Provengal, and English literatures becomes problematic in Italy because of the
evolution of its poetry away from the courtly love ideal, and because of socio-cultural
changes involving the rise of the merchant class in Italy and the fall of the old aristocratic
way of life that was idealized in earlier love poetry.
References to falconry and the birds involved are in fact much less common in
Italian than in other vernacular literatures. The courtly connotations of birds of prey are
less relevant to Italian society than to the still feudal systems of Northern Europe. In the
Duecento and Trecento and beyond, Italian society is very dynamic. The rise of the
merchant class steals the exclusivity of leisure time and its pursuits such as falconry from
the crumbling aristocracy. The association of falconry with knighthood and courtly love,
by now a conventionalized construct, is simply not very relevant to the new society.
Daniela Boccassini, I1 volo della mente. Falconeria e sojia nel mondo mediterraneo: Islam, Federico II,
Dante (Ravenna: Longo, 2003).