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1 - The First Franco-Italian Vernacular Textual Witnesses of the Charlemagne Epic Tradition in the Italian Peninsula: Hybrid Forms
- Edited by Jane E. Everson
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- Book:
- Charlemagne in Italy
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 08 June 2023
- Print publication:
- 24 January 2023, pp 26-73
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Summary
A change of perspective
The earliest representations of Charlemagne in the Italian literary tradition are derived from the preceding tradition of French chansons de geste. These portraits are then progressively modified and adapted to the cultural and political milieu of Italy, a process that begins as early as the end of the thirteenth century. In the Italian peninsula, a power void opened in the absence of emperor and pope from the peninsula in the years after Frederick II's death in 1250. Literary models and the real world clashed, making their mark on literature: in the Italian Charle¬magne epic, the main characters are clans of nobles, the pope and the emperor, in a multifaceted society that includes women, children and less privileged individuals like dwarves and woodsmen. The emperor is placed in his family context, from his forefathers to selected descendants, in order to display the origin of his characteris¬tics and their results. In this literary context, Charlemagne may represent not only the actual eighth- to ninth-century emperor, but may also reflect other, subsequent imperial figures, as well as rulers contemporary with the surviving MSS.
The poems furthermore, as is typical of the chanson de geste, play a didactic role. So on the one hand, Carlo Magno is the ideal Holy Roman Emperor offering a model to follow, ruling western Christendom: in Aspremont, chronologically the earliest composition where the action is set in the Italian peninsula, he is the absolute hero of the international scene for his leadership when he defeats the Saracen Agoulant. On the other hand, he constantly confronts domestic national enemies: his baron Girard de Fraite revolts against him. This is a reflection of the political environment typical of the regions of Lombardy and Veneto at the end of the thirteenth century and into the fourteenth, when Franco-Italian epic appears. The ʻCycle of the King’ (French Cycle du roi) is a perfect means of expression for multiple voices since it speaks both to the role of emperor and to the role of local rulers – not only rising local rulers, but also descendants of the Carolingians in the form of the house of Anjou with its aspiration to replace the Holy Roman (German) Emperor, and the papacy. Political alliances influence the depiction of Charlemagne in these poems: it tends to be negative in Ghibelline areas, where the Germanic emperor theoretically held sway, and positive in Guelph lands, where the French monarchy and papacy supported Charlemagne/Carlo.
3 - Carlo Magno, Ideal Progenitor of Country and Lineage: the Image of Charlemagne in the Prose Compilations of Andrea da Barberino
- Edited by Jane E. Everson
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- Book:
- Charlemagne in Italy
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 08 June 2023
- Print publication:
- 24 January 2023, pp 107-140
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Summary
Andrea da Barberino's works, extremely popular in his own day, have never ceased to attract readers. At the end of the fourteenth and beginning of the fifteenth cen¬turies, he created a unique late medieval vernacular series of prose epics as an account of Florentine history by linking French and Italian peoples through their ancestors, biblical then Roman, into a chronicle-like multi-volume prose narration. He joins ma¬terial from Old French epics disseminated across northern Italy with classical, popular, and historical sources on a genealogical framework that not only explains the past but also seeks to inform the future. His Carlo Magno serves at least in part as a stand-in for French political leaders of his own time and place: the Anjou family. Andrea's Carlo Magno therefore appears in a largely positive light, unlike the Charlemagne image in his immediate predecessors from northern Italy discussed in Chapter 2.
As Gene Brucker wrote, ‘The history of Florence, even at its most democratic, remains in large measure the history of its principal families’. Andrea makes Carlo Magno one of Florence's own: he narrates Carlo Magno's biography like that of a notable Florentine personality, through his family history. Therefore, building upon previous chapters about the Franco-Italian Charlemagne and the volume of Charlemagne in Latin literature, this chapter presents Andrea and his works together with the political culture of his time, then examines how Andrea's Carlo Magno appears, with reflections upon Andrea's historical moment and its influence upon that vision.
Andrea da Barberino and the cantambanco tradition
Little is known of Andrea da Barberino, also known as Andrea di Jacopo de’ Magnabotti da Barberino di Val d’Elsa. Manuscripts call him author or ‘trans-lator’, and legal documents offer proof of his living in Florence c. 1372 to c. 1433. There is no attestation of a specific birthdate or place; two archival documents offer evidence. In the first, a 1427 portata al catasto, similar to a tax declaration – he says that he is more than 55 years old. In the second, from 1431, Andrea says he is over 60 years old. He had a home in Piazza San Felice, in the Ferza district (now in front of Palazzo Pitti). He also owned a house in Via della Pergola, held land outside the city in Pieve di Settimo and practised the profession of ‘chantatore’. He is called ‘Mastro’ or ‘Maestro’.
Evidence of Oral Interference in Franco-Italian
- Leslie Zarker Morgan
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- Journal:
- Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique / Volume 30 / Issue 4 / Winter 1985
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 27 June 2016, pp. 407-414
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The four lexemes bragagner, sberna, seterer and smenaventure are problematic within the text of Ms. marc. fr. 13 since the forms differ from those of any other texts of the time (with the exception of other Franco-Italian texts in the case of bragagner). I will show that the points of difference are phonological and morphological changes resulting from interference patterns with spoken Italian.
Manoscritto marciano francese 13 (St. Mark’s manuscript 13 of the French collection) is an untitled anonymous manuscript from the first half of the 14th century at St. Mark’s Library in Venice. It contains eight chansons de geste. These are the first written versions of Old French epic poetry produced in Italy; that is, they are not copies of Old French manuscripts.
Female enfances: At the Intersection of Romance and Epic
- Edited by Barbara K. Altmann, Carleton W. Carroll
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- Book:
- The Court Reconvenes
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 31 March 2023
- Print publication:
- 01 January 2002, pp 141-150
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The “falsely accused queen” story, an adjunct to numerous epic enfances, is more than a folktale borrowed into late medieval literary narrative. It is a reflection of social concerns about inheritance, family and marriage conditions similar to those seen in male enfances which it parallels, as well as being a dilatory plot technique which allows interlace in the form of a further character to be followed, and finally, it is a model specular episode for “expansion by variation” favored by both romance and epic. These tales are indeed “female enfances” because of their relationship to male enfances accounts and because of the integration of the female protagonist into an adult societal position.
Suard has described late chansons de geste (fourteenth- to fifteenth-century texts) by four essential characteristics (I change the order): 1. new types of characters; 2. new importance of folkloric and marvelous elements; 3. great length; and 4. strong didactic interest (449). These characteristics begin to appear in the thirteenth century. The increasingly frequent appearance of women among these new character types in the chanson de geste during the thirteenth century has been linked to the influence of courtly literature, though differences in women's roles between Arthurian and Carolingian plots are noticeable (cf. Vitz; Kay; Sinclair). The number of women protagonists increases with the number of young protagonists, of enfants.
Among the gestes which include female protagonists are those of Nanteuil and Charlemagne. Formally chansons de geste – that is, assonanced or rhymed laisses of decasyllables or alexandrines – they are frequently called chansons d’aventures or even romances. In the Charlemagne cycle, Berte aux grands pieds, Macario (Reine Sibille), Berta e Milone are dominated by female protagonists; in the geste of Nanteuil, Aye d’Avignon and Parise la duchesse are protagonists of the eponymous poems. Non-cyclical poems based on the same motif are also difficult to place by genre: Kibler calls La Belle Hélène de Constantinople a chanson de geste in form only (“Epic to Romance” 332); Wallensköld subtitles Florence de Rome a chanson d’aventure; and Kay calls the same poem “a limit-text of the genre” (“Chansons de geste” 158).