Rhythmical Figures in Dante’s Commedia: A Study of Memory and Composition after Gianfranco Contini

This thesis takes Contini’s 1965 study ‘Un’interpretazione di Dante’, and its discussion of repeated lines and part-lines, as its point of departure in order to pursue new understanding of the compositional processes of Dante’s Commedia. It shows how the repetition of similar items, or ‘figures’, relates to orality both in a transmissional, or textual-critical sense, as well as in a compositional, or oral-formulaic, sense. Recollected language in the poem is discovered to be more pervasive than hitherto thought, and this data is then interrogated, revealing a conception of heterogenous units of rhythm and syntax susceptible of re-use. This challenges the frameworks for prosodic description that have been used to date to describe the poem, while setting up a new historical understanding of rhythm as ‘shape’. These intertwined rhythmical-syntactical units, revealed through line-by-line comparison of the entire poem, are then shown to be historically emplaced – a product of the language-learning practices of the medieval grammatica. Figurae uerborum, a medieval conception of syntax and rhythm belonging to the grammatica, and Contini’s ‘figure ritmiche’ together raise an interpretive challenge: they ask for an autonomous way of speaking about achievements of syntax and rhythm, with reference to new critical categories – particularly memorability and authority. A final section proposes a rhythmical-critical experiment: a practical-critical analysis of a specific rhythmical shape, exploring how the new compositional dynamics discovered in the course of the thesis change how the critic relates to the newly conceived poetic object. From medieval grammarians to twentieth-century philologists, this thesis uncovers a tradition of thought that sees rhythm not as an accident of poetic language, but as a grammatical phenomenon, best exemplified in the poets.

Name dc:type.qualificationname

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

Doctoral

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

University of Cambridge

Year dc:date.issued

2019

Author dc:creator

• Pepin, Ryan

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Webb, Heather

• Dante
• Rhythm
• Gianfranco Contini
• Metre
• Textual Criticism
• Orality

Licence

• https://apollo8-f-pro.lib.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/2c39b5f0-fbf2-4391-a2e2-12442fd989fe/download
• https://www.rioxx.net/licenses/all-rights-reserved/

Language dc:language

eng

DOI dc:identifier.doi

https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.52266

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.repository.cam.ac.uk:1810/305184