Italian Literature Commons^™

Dante’S Volgare And The Pastoral Presence: An Analysis Of The Concept Of Language In The Divina Commedia, Paola M. Rodriguez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Dante’s conception of the Italian vernacular, the “volgare illustre”, is a central concern of his work and one which catalyses and nurtures, both overtly and covertly, his creation of the Commedia. Although Dante positions himself in his writings as the continual defender and most prolific poet of the vernacular, isolating a specific linguistic use and structure, a coherent definition of what vernacular Dante privileges or what appropriate usage he adheres to, is a difficult and often confusing task. The existence of two eclogues, the only works by Dante to have been written after the majority of the Commedia had been …

Mythos And Meaning: Medieval Appropriations Of Mythological Types In The Consolation Of Philosophy And Later Western Literatures, Francis J. Hunter

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

Often referred to as the last Roman and first medieval, Boethius, author of The Consolation of Philosophy, has been widely received as an unoriginal philosopher who sought to preserve Platonic thought as the Western Roman Empire fell. However, this essay features an investigation into the literary originality of Boethius who initiates a line of Christian and Platonic literatures to follow in the medieval European tradition. Boethius demonstrates himself to be a poet who makes great use of philosophy rather than as a philosopher writing poetry. Boethius’ poetic influence is felt most strongly in major aspects of Dante’s Divine Comedy and …

What Our Hearts Crave For: An Examination Of The Paradoxical Attraction To Dante’S Inferno, Ketzalt E. Marquez

Honors Projects

This paper serves to analyze and explain why audiences are attracted to stories with elements of Horror in them, using Dante’s Inferno as the vehicle for this conversation, as the Inferno’s setting is in the worse possible place imaginable. Horror narratives arise feelings of fear and disgust in its audiences through the use of monsters, as audiences relate to the fear and disgust the positive characters in the narratives are feeling because of the monster’s presence. Since these emotions arise in a safe space, such as in literature or film, where the source of the emotions is not endangering the …

Quod Inane Vocamus: Lucretius’ Void In Seventeenth-Century Italy, Carlo Bottone

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

During the seventeenth century, the revival of atomic theories and the beginning of barometric experiments sparked a philosophical debate on the existence and the nature of void, which in turn generated new attention to the ancient disputes on void and prompted new interpretations of Lucretius’ examination of inane (De Rerum Natura, I.329-397). Commentators began to discuss the passage beyond the ancient philosophical tradition and in relation to modern ideas and recent discoveries, while Vacuists appealed to Lucretian arguments to prove or deny the existence of an absolute void interspersed among corpuscles.

My research contributes to the scholarship on …

Penelope’S Daughters, Barbara Dell`Abate-Çelebi

Zea E-Books Collection

A feminist perspective of the myth of Penelope in Annie Leclerc’s Toi, Pénélope, Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad and Silvana La Spina’s Penelope.

At the origin of Western literature stands Queen Penelope—faithfully waiting for her husband to come home: keeping house, holding on to the throne, keeping the suitors at arm’s length, preserving Odysseus’ place and memory, deserted for the pursuit of war and adventures, and bringing up a son alone, but always keeping the marriage intact. Yet recently the character of Penelope, long the archetype of abandoned, faithful, submissive, passive wife, has been reinterpreted by feminist criticism and re-envisioned by …