Literature 4.2

This issue of RHESIS – Literature is largely devoted to the theme of allegory, gathering the contributions that various scholars brought to the Workshop on “Forms of Knowledge, Strategies and Allegorical Processes in Literary Texts” (Cagliari, Department of Philology, Literature and Linguistics, 26-28 Sept. 2013).
The issue also includes an article by Fabio Vasarri (Due silenzi a teatro. Sarraute, Ginzburg) in the section ‘Articles’, and a contribution by Giuseppe Marci (Isole e continenti, letterature e identità: attraversando le frontiere del Sud) in the section ‘Discussions’.

The contributions that follow derive from the papers presented at the Workshop Forme di conoscenza, strategie e procedimenti allegorici nei testi letterari, (Cagliari, Department of Philology, Literature and Linguistics, 26-28 Sept. 2013), later developed and re-elaborated by the individual authors.
The contributions and reflections included here are an attempt at a preliminary (and in no way exhaustive) exploration of issues connected to allegory in a multidisciplinary perspective, starting from the different experiences and interests of each of the scholars involved.

This article aims to explain the wide diffusion of the simile (similitudo) in texts with psychagogic purposes, be they literary, political, etc. Given that similes can be non-metaphoric, this article only focuses on the metaphoric similes which represent animals in fables. It is argued that the abovementioned diffusion is a consequence of the great efficacy of the simile in affecting reasoning based on analogical models as well as the cognitive components of attitudes and stereotypes.

Allegory is, as already observed in antiquity (Heraclitus), an expression that says something different from what it means. This difference is linked to the origins and the development of language itself, as a factor that promotes the humanization of man in the historical development. An unveiling process – that leads, beyond the conventional form and the conventional connection between the name and the thing, to the infinite plurality of signs and meanings – is opposed to the discursive logic of rational reasoning. This vocation to the ‘ulteriority’ on the one hand approaches the allegory to the philosophical tendency looking for truth, on the other hand it shows the intimate connection with the dimension of the dream, with the philosophy of the path (Taoism) and with serendipity. In being kept in suspense between silence and speech, in saying things ‘otherwise’, in the ‘possibility’ of the impossible and in the possibility to say the ineffable, allegory gives man (a being perennially on the move and in dialogue with himself and with others) the gift of thought, opening new and unexpected horizons of meaning and change.

Long before the appearance of the term ‘allegory’ (attested for the first time within Stoicism), there came into use in ancient Greece, from the sixth century. a. C., an allegorical interpretation of the mythic narratives preserved in the Homeric and Hesiodic poems; this practice took hold in the classical age, especially at the hands of the Sophists. In more remote dates, perhaps as early as the Iliad, we can see the interest of poets and philosophers towards such a device, so well-suited for didactic or satirical purposes.

The article analyses the presence of allegory in a lay narrative text such as the Lancelot en prose. The aim is to demonstrate ˗ with a series, albeit limited, of examples ˗ how the narrative word acquired an extra weight in this text, beyond literal values, which allows space for added meanings and innovation.

The article shows that Dante’s canzone Tre donne intorno al cor mi son venute has a rhetorical – narratological and semantic – structure based on allegory, which displays the basic characteristics later used by Dante to write the Divina Commedia: the analytic quality of the allegorical representation, the close relationship between the allegorical scene and the psychic experience of the self, and the double reading corresponding to two different types of reader.

This articles sets out to demonstrate the persistence of some fundamental motifs in cultural syncretism of the IV-V centuries, i.e. at a crucial moment in the shaping of European culture. In the second half of the 12th century, there is the coexistence and near-overlapping of Latin and Romance texts. Two different and competing textual forms, the Latin one and the Romance one, concur to produce new knowledge in the fields of expression and of poetic and historical intelligence. Paganism and Christianity, the sublime and the humble merge in the schools and in life to explore a world of forms as form to describe the world. In the background of this scenario an old dog roams, the mystery and the key to these worlds.

Based on a definition of allegory which combines personification (subject) and metaphor (action), the paper discusses some key-episodes of Chrétien de Troyes’ Chevalier de la Charrette and Chevalier au Lion so as to show when the combination is truly functional to the development of an allegorical framework. At the same time, it will be shown that all presented cases denote the emergence, on the surface of the text, of the thematic drives that support the dramatic development of these romances, in order to clarify the crucial relevance of given episodes. Typically, Chrétien makes use of allegory when it comes to summarizing in categorical terms the details of a dilemma, that is when the protagonist is required to take responsibility for a dramatic choice or when he finds himself in an apparently paradoxical situation resulting from choices he previously made. Textual evidence will show that Chrétien makes use of the abstractum agens in order to emphasize congruence between matiere and sen, that is the situations described in respect to the thematic framework that substantiates his romances.

Raoul de Houdenc’s Meraugis de Portlesguez, probably composed in the early 13^th century, is a parody of motifs and stylistic elements typical of Arthurian romance. However, Raoul, who also wrote short allegorical poems, does not limit the game of intertextual references interwoven in the romance to a parodic mode, but he often recurs to allegorical figures and personifications – such as the “vielle” of ll. 1418-1504 – that provide not only the key to the interpretation of some very enigmatic episodes, but also the cipher required to understand the meaning of the entire romance.

The Libellus de moribus hominum et de officiis nobilium super ludo scaccorum by Jacobus de Cessolis, written between the end of the 13^th and the beginning of the 14^th century, is a moral treatise that makes use of the game of chess to stage an allegorical depiction of medieval society. This paper aims to show the dialectic established between the explanation of the general allegory provided by the author and the accumulation of exempla, sententiae and anecdotes. The image of the chessboard influences the entire collection, determining Jacobus de Cessolis’s selection of “stories”, which were carefully chosen to highlight the centrality of the philosophy of education. This hypothesis will be investigated not only in the Latin original, but also in its Italian translations (from Tuscany and Veneto), and in particular, I will pay careful attention to the illustrative cycle of a manuscript of the Tuscan version of the Libellus, the ms. Firenze, Biblioteca Riccardiana, Riccardiano 2513.

The Llibre de meravelles is a huge encyclopaedic treatise in 10 books composed in Catalan by Ramon Llull in the late 13^th century. The 7^th book, entitled Llibre de les bèsties, has been composed before the whole treatise: it’s a fable about animals where the protagonist is Na Renart (the Fox), with his continuous and obsessive attempts to kill the king Lion. Here Llull uses allegory to criticize strongly the European courts and their sovereigns. In this contribution the main narrative techniques, and some of the exempla used by Llull to achieve his moral and politic purpose through using literary language, will be analysed.

The so-called «Gubbio Manuscript», «Il Bestiario moralizzato», has been discovered in a private library at the end of the 19^th century. The corpus is made up of 64 sonnets that have been written by an unknown poet. In them, the author gives every evocated animal a character and adds a physiological trait; then, he later establishes many associations with religious aspects that are mainly connected with the Bible. These poems, thus, are intended to instruct readers towards a more ethical and didactic way of life.

Juan de Mena’s Laberinto de Fortuna (1444) is built on three textual levels: a strictly allegorical one – related to the problem of knowledge, the relationship between Fortune and Providence and the problem of Time – an historical-political level and a moral one. One of the main problems of Juan de Mena’s allegorical representation lies in the representation of Time, so that, by means of this performance, the author also shows and suggests us his own concept of Time.
The textual allegorical strategy of the Laberinto is largely based on a double divergence: on the one hand the text shows a divergence between the visionary-self and the experiential-self, and, on the other hand, it shows a divergence related to time, since, effectively, the only spinning wheel is the wheel of the present, whereas the wheel of the past and the wheel of the future remain motionless. From here stems the idea that Fortune is essentially the Time in its arduous complexity.
Moreover, the two terms of Juan de Mena’s allegorical discourse, Providence and Fortune, are represented in opposite ways: the first is an hypostasis deriving from the visionary and transcendental ‘self’ of the author; the second is primarily an absence, a pure factuality remaining undetermined, de-personified, and not crossing the threshold of personification.
Similarly, the labyrinth itself is absent, in a way that means the lack of discernment, in a mind not guided by Providence. Finally, the labyrinth/laberinto performed by Juan de Mena, turns to be eminently a textual labyrinth, where the reader needs to disentangle to get to the bottom of its meaning.

This paper aims to uncover the meaning of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice in Italian theatre plays and operas from the Late Reinassance to the Early Baroque, especially regarding the definition of genre and the transmission of such texts. Since vernacular secular theatre and opera were a novelty, it is not unreasonable to infer that the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice was intended as a means to celebrate the power of theatre and music flourishing again. One section is devoted to the complex relationship between the libretto of Ottavio Rinuccini’s Euridice and the two musical scores (by Iacopo Peri and Giulio Caccini).

The peculiarity of Dino Buzzati’s allegory is shown through the analysis of his first three narrative texts, the novels Bàrnabo delle montagne, Il segreto del Bosco Vecchio and Il deserto dei Tartari. By means of a number of original solutions, the author appears to be deeply modern in his use of the allegorical procedures. That which prevails in his texts, characterised by the frequent recurrence of liminar spaces such as the mountain and the desert, is a sense of estrangement and a tension toward something unknown, which escapes any univocal meaning and constitutes the fascinating poetic character of the writer.

An invasion of silence marks 20^th century drama. This article proposes a close comparison of two plays, Nathalie Sarraute’s Le silence (Silence, 1964) and Natalia Ginzburg’s La porta sbagliata (The Wrong Door, 1968). They both present a talkative group dealing with a taciturn person and explore the hostile reactions created by this situation, in the dynamic tension between words and silence. The comparison shows the main similarities of these two plays: the use of clichés, the reference to angels, the typology of the silent character and the discussion of the uncanny and the unsaid. This kind of new conversation drama is involved in the late 20^th-century debate on the crisis of playwriting.

The Mediterranean Sea is the liquida frontiera which has become an archetype reproduced in literature and in films. It is a border in the sense of a transit place, a meeting place that fosters dialogues between peoples coming from different realities, each of them speaking their own language, and pursuing economical and
political interests that are often in contrast.
Such variety has not always been considered an enrichment; on the contrary, it has undergone a process of schematization, resulting in a repertoire of stereotypes and images produced by an external and judging perspective.
We are indebted to literature – to Giovanni Verga, Federico De Roberto, Luigi Capuana, Luigi Pirandello, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, Leonardo Sciascia, Gesualdo Bufalino, Andrea Camilleri – for providing us with a more truthful narration which reproduces the phenomenon in all its complexity, including the description of the present process of reciprocal adjustment.