ITALIAN BOOKSHELF (download as PDF) - Ibiblio

458 Annali d’italianistica 30 (2012)
understanding of the so-called “poetics of insult” as an instrument of public
censure. The result is the most comprehensive analysis of the six tenzone
sonnets within the larger Italian literary tradition to date.
The book is in many ways the latest installment in Alfie’s career-long effort
to pull comic poetry out from under the long shadow cast by the courtly lyrics of
the dolce stil nuovo. Arguing for the moral function of literary derision, Alfie
grounds his readings of the tenzone within thirteenth-century debates over the
nature, value and legitimacy of the Florentine nobility. In a marked departure
from the approach taken in his earlier monograph (Comedy and Culture: Cecco
Angiolieri’s Poetry and Later Medieval Society. Leeds: Northern Universities
Press, 2001) — namely, that of distinguishing between the seemingly
autobiographical claims made by jocose poets and their comic masks — Alfie
plunders the Alighieri and Donati family histories to throw light upon the highly
personal sequence of ad hominem attacks. Marriages, debts, parents, siblings,
murder and revenge are just part of the lively cultural backdrop informing the
two antagonists’ poetic slander. But much to the author’s credit, Alfie is careful
not to let his biographical interpolations descend into facile speculation
regarding the palinodic value of Dante’s subsequent meeting with Forese in the
Commedia. The focus instead remains squarely on the tenzoni themselves, on
their literary precursors and influence, and on their clear appurtenance to a
robust yet currently understudied rhetorical tradition.
The first of the book’s five short chapters begins with an examination of the
poetry of blame (vituperium or improperium) in the decades leading up to the
tenzone exchange. It provides a useful consolidation of scholarship on jocose
poetry in general, and picks up several threads from Alfie’s earlier publications
on some of the libelous, misogynist and misanthropic tropes commonly found in
the comic literature of the Duecento. Citations from Brunetto Latini and others
provide the theoretical framework debate poetry as forum for public reproach
and correction. A working lexicon of vituperative motifs is then gleaned from
close readings of three sonnets by the Florentine caposcuola of derisive verse,
Rustico Filippi (ca. 1230-1295). The shift from Rustico’s anti-feminist satire to
Dante’s invective against death in “Morte villana, di pietà nemica” is abrupt, but
does nevertheless illustrate Dante’s familiarity with the critical terminology of
vituperium (29-31).
Alfie flexes his philological muscles in the next chapter, where all six of the
tenzoni between Dante and Forese come under close scrutiny. A formal analysis
of each poem is set against a wealth of socio-historical material relating to, for
example, familial alliances, mercantile jargon and even female physiognomy.
The author’s original insights regarding Forese’s enigmatic reference to
“Solomon’s knot” in his first rebuttal sonnet to Dante are particularly
convincing (40-43). Also worth noting is the care taken with the sonnets of both
tenzonanti — Alfie escapes the bias displayed by many dantisti by applying his
scholarly rigor to Dante’s and Forese’s words in equal measure. What emerges