Blooms Literary Themes - THE TRICKSTER.pdf - ymerleksi - home

60
Giovanni Boccaccio
26. “Quell’altro che ne’ fi anchi è così poco, / Michele Scotto fu,
che veramente / de le magiche frode seppe ‘l gioco” (Inferno xx,
115–117).
27. Iacopo della Lana’s commentary reads: “ . . . usando con gentili
uomini e cavalieri, e mangiando come si usa tra essi in brigata a
casa l’un dell’altro, quando venia la volta di lui d’apparecchiare”
(Guido Biagi, La Divina Commedia nella fi gurazione artistica e.
nel secolare commento: Inferno [Turin: UTET, 1924], p. 507). Cf.
Branca’s note, Decameron, p. 1447.
28. Tertullian, De spectaculis, CSEL, xx (pars. I), pp. 1–29; Cyprian,
De spectaculis, PL 4, cols. 799–788. Boccaccio, Genealogia deorum
gentilium libri, ed. Vincenzo Romano, 2 vols. (Bari: Laterza,
1951), xiv, 14, p. 724.
29. Th is seductive hypothesis, by no means to be entirely discarded,
was eloquently put forward by Luigi Pirandello, “Il canto XXI
dell’Inferno,” in Letture Dantesche: Inferno, ed. Giovanni Getto
(Florence: Sansoni, 1955). pp. 395–414.
30. Th ere is in Dante’s Paradiso what I call a theology of play,
which deploys motifs such as the music of the spheres, the
new Jerusalem as both a garden and an amphitheater (Paradiso
xxx, 108ff .), songs, actors’ craft, dance of the stars (which John
Freccero, in a diff erent context, has studied, see his “Paradiso x:
Th e Dance of the Stars,” Dante Studies, 86 [1968], pp. 85–111).
In Paradiso this theologia ludens, of Neoplatonic origin, is the
point of convergence of theology and esthetics, a question which
deserves an ample investigation.
31. Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, De hominis dignitate, Heptaplus,
De ente et uno e scritti vari, ed. E. Garin (Florence: Vallecchi, 1942).
Cf. E. Garin, Medioevo e rinascimento (Bari: Laterza, 1954), pp.
150–191. Particularly cogent is Frances A. Yates, Giordano Bruno
and the Hermetic Tradition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1964), pp. 44–168. See also D. P. Walker, Spiritual and Demonic
Magic from Ficino to Campanella (London: Warburg Institute,
1958). Th e Christian attack on magic was formulated by St.
Augustine, among others. Cf. Th e City of God, viii, 18, 19, 26; ix, 1.
32. “Egli è troppo gran segreto quello che voi volete sapere, e è cosa
da disfarmi e da cacciarmi del mondo, anzi da farmi mettere
in bocca del lucifero da San Gallo, se altri il risapesse . . .”
(Decameron, p. 746).