OVI Seminar Series 2024, II

Wednesday, March 27, 2024 10:00 am EST

The centrality of the figure of Beatrice within the literary work of Dante Alighieri is such a well-known and peacefully accepted assumption in Dante’s modern exegesis that it is not the subject of particular critical controversy. Described as “a basic element, a great ‘myth'” by Aldo Vallone, Beatrice is in fact generally interpreted as a constant presence in Dante’s production between the end of the thirteenth and the beginning of the fourteenth century. A systematic analysis of Dante’s corpus reveals, However, that Beatrice is an open literary concept and in continuous construction. The purpose of this contribution is to reconsider the role, functions and characteristics of the figure of Beatrice in the texts preceding the composition of the Vita nova, defining a “Beatrician micro-canon” and reflecting on the genesis of the myth of Beatrice. Join us on Wednesday, March 27, 2024, from 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. ET.

Speaker:
Mattia Boccuti, Teaching Scholar Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Notre Dame. His research focuses on the literary production of Dante and, in particular, on how the figure of Beatrice informs and reflects that of its author. He published contributions on the Marian tradition in the Comedy, the Edenic songs of Purgatory and the Psalms penitentiales of Petrarch. His current research interests are Environmental Criticism, Digital Humanities, the “popular” reception of Dante’s corpus in North America in the first half of the twentieth century and the relationship between novellas and ballads in the Decameron.

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