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Introduction: A Mediterranean Comedy

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Dante and the Mediterranean Comedy

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Abstract

In recent decades, the concept of Mediterranean has been cited with frequency in relation to the study of medieval literatures. And yet, in what sense would Dante’s Comedy be “Mediterranean”? By virtue of the bounty of references to this sea, its geography and people, its history, cities, myths, literatures, and religions, through the one hundred cantos? What does Mediterranean mean in this context? Is it linked to the Greek-Arabic sources that inform his image of the world? The definition that is explored in this book engages with debates sparked by Peregrine Horden and Nicholas Purcell in The Corrupting Sea: A Study of Mediterranean History (2000). It moves away from what could be called an “impressionistic” or “romantic” reference to the Mediterranean. Maybe the Mediterranean is not—or at least is not only—where we expect it to be in the poem. And here is where Horden and Purcell’s definition of the Mediterranean as the “corrupting sea” seems to meet the poem, in its depiction of this world through the harsh lenses of blame, ridicule, and damnation. The image of the Mediterranean that seeps through the poem and through the history of its circulation is vivid yet hardly idyllic.

Almost with the same sunset and same sunrise

sit both Béjaïa and the place from which I was,

that with its blood once made the harbor hot.

—Dante, Paradiso 9: 91–93 (“Ad un occaso quasi e ad un orto / Buggea siede e la terra ond’io fui, / che fe’ del sangue suo già caldo il porto.”)

Zenone: ‘But isn’t this the Holy Land?’ Rozzone: ‘I wish it was holy, my brother! This is a cursed land, all rocks and weeds!’ Zenone: ‘But isn’t this expanse of water the sea?’ Rozzone: ‘Sea? Here we call it lake, but it might be!

—Monicelli, Age & Scarpelli, Brancaleone at the Crusades (Zenone: “Ma questa tera non è issa Tera Santa?” Rozzone: “Magara fusse santa, frate meo! Ista è terra maladitta, tutta sassa e zeppaglie!” Zenone: “Ma questa grand’acqua non è lo mare?” Rozzone: “Mare? Noi da este parti lo dicemo lago, ma pole esse!”)

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Kinoshita (2009: 601). The secondary literature cited in this introduction is not intended to be comprehensive. For an overview of approaches and topics, see Akbari and Mallette (2013), Morosini and Perissinotto (2007), Attar and Shutters (2014), and Allan and Benigni (2017).

  2. 2.

    In addition to the seminal works of cultural and literary historians such as Ribera Tarragó, Asín Palacios, Américo Castro, or García Gómez, see Galmés Fuentes (2000) and Menocal (2010) (19871). For an overview of this field, see Szpiech (2013). On Sicily, see Mallette (2005). For the ancient French literature outside of France, see Morreale and Paul (2018).

  3. 3.

    Pioneering work in Italy has been done by Antonio Pioletti, who since the 1990s has coordinated international colloquia as well as the publication of the series “Medioevo Romanzo e Orientale” (Rubbettino), and the “Quaderni di Medioevo Romanzo e orientale.” In recent years, Pioletti has been advocating for the “formulation of an Euro-Mediterranean literary canon” Pioletti (2018). The ambitious multivolume Lo spazio letterario del Medioevo (The Literary Space of the Middle Ages), published by Salerno, devotes three substantial sections to The Byzantine Culture (v. 3.I, ed Guglielmo Cavallo, 2004); The Arabic-Islamic Culture (v. 3.II, ed. Mario Capaldo, 2003); and The Slavic Cultures (v. 3.III, ed. Cristiano Diddi, 2006). It also dedicates several insightful volumes to the circulation and reception of Latin and vernacular texts. However, because the editorial project centers on the Western European Middle Ages, it does not use the concept of Mediterranean. The European orientation of the project is sealed in the general title of the three volumes, which suggests boundaries—porous and dialogic though—between different cultures: Le culture circostanti (the Surrounding Cultures).

  4. 4.

    A query on the online “Bibliografia Dantesca Internazionale” (http://dantesca.ntc.it) confirms the paucity of titles in which the term “Mediterranean” is explicitly mentioned in relation to Dante. These include Boccassini (2003), Cachey (2014), Anselmi (2017), and Morosini (2019, 2020). It should be noted, however, that the use of the term ‘Mediterranean’ is often conflated with others such as Islam, the Orient, the Other, or the East. On the other hand, works that could be relevant to a “Mediterraneist approach” do not necessarily mention the term, including studies on the influence and reception of Dante’s work among Jewish literati: Battistoni (2004), Debenedetti Stow (2004), Salah (2013), Schippers (2014), and Girón-Negrón (2015).

  5. 5.

    On the use of Dante in Italian nationalistic discourse, see Audeh and Havely (2012), and Marazzi (2015).

  6. 6.

    Barański (1986) and, Fortuna et al. (2010).

  7. 7.

    Stone (2006).

  8. 8.

    One significant exception is precisely Dante, as I will discuss at the end of Chap. 6.

  9. 9.

    Peregrine Horden in Catlos and Kinoshita (2017: 82). The obvious target of this remark is the work of Rosa María Menocal and the scholars she inspired. But Horden seems to take aim at works and authors much closer to him, in time and space, when he lambasts “the current babble of ‘talking Mediterranean’” (68). More generally, Horden acknowledges an impasse in Mediterranean studies in dealing with what he calls “the cultural Mediterranean,” “which includes the art history, the architecture, the movement of images, the Mediterraneanization of the contexts, the texts, the literary texts” (82).

  10. 10.

    The vastness and richness of the bibliography on the subject would advise against specific references. A few helpful points of departure could be Barolini (1984), Boitani (1994), Cornish (2011), and Ziolkowski (2014).

  11. 11.

    Kantorowicz (1965: 167–183; 213–246; 1967) and Boccassini (2003).

  12. 12.

    Boitani (1994), Ziolkowski (2014), Biffs and Hornblower (2018), Gentili (2020: 232–35).

  13. 13.

    For the cartographical and legendary aspects of the canto, see Corti (2003: 255–283). Angelo De Gubernatis (1901: 495–537) was among the first to suggest an analogy between the “folle volo” (flight of folly) of Ulysses and the navigational misfortunes of the Genoese Valdino and Ugolino Vivaldi in the late thirteenth century. On the impact of the Comedy on Columbus’ perception both of the cosmos and the eschatological meaning of his journey, see Watt (2017).

  14. 14.

    “Né dolcezza di figlio, né la pieta / del vecchio padre, né ‘l debito amore / lo qual dovea Penelopè far lieta, // vincer poter dentro da me l’ardore / ch’i’ ebbi a divenir del mondo esperto, / e de li vizi umani e del valore.”

  15. 15.

    Freccero (1986: 136–151).

  16. 16.

    On the “modernity” of Dante’s version of the Greek hero, see Jorge Luís Borges’ “The Last Voyage of Ulysses” (1999: 5–7). See also Barolini (1992) and Boitani (1994).

  17. 17.

    Yet it appears in some of the early commentators on the Comedy.

  18. 18.

    Barolini (1992).

  19. 19.

    Baldacci (2001), Bouloux (2002), Schildgen (2002), Scafi (2007), Hiatt (2008), Ferroni (2009), Bruni (2011), Cachey (2015), and Tavoni (2019).

  20. 20.

    Morosini (2019).

  21. 21.

    Petrocchi (1969: 119–141), Sayers (2001), Baldelli (2015), and Peirone (2016).

  22. 22.

    “Quale ne l’arzanà de’ Viniziani / bolle l’inverno la tenace pece / a rimpalmare i legni lor non sani, // ché navicar non ponno—in quella vece / chi fa suo legno novo e chi ristoppa / le coste a quel che più vïaggi fece; // chi ribatte da proda e chi da poppa; / altri fa remi e altri volge sarte; / chi terzeruolo e artimon rintoppa -: // tal, non per foco, ma per divin’ arte, / bollia là giuso una pegola spessa, / che ’nviscava la ripa d’ogne parte.”

  23. 23.

    Braudel (1972: 246–266).

  24. 24.

    The other place is Inf. 16:128. On the comicality of cantos 21–22, see Picone (1989) and Pertile (2009).

  25. 25.

    “Godi, Fiorenza, poi che se’ sì grande, / che per mare e per terra batti l’ali, / o per lo ‘nferno tuo nome si spande”

  26. 26.

    “E fa saper a’ due miglior da Fano, / a messer Guido e anco ad Angiolello, / che, se l’antiveder qui non è vano, // gittati saran fuor di lor vasello / e mazzerati presso a la Cattolica / per tradimento d’un tiranno fello. // Tra l’isola di Cipri a di Maiolica / non vide mai sì gran fallo Nettuno, / non da pirate, non fa gente argolica.”

  27. 27.

    Akasoy (2010).

  28. 28.

    “Lo principe de’ nuovi Farisei, / avendo guerra presso a Laterano, / e non con Saracin né con Giudei, // ché ciascun suo nimico era Cristiano, / e nessun era stato a vincer Acri / né mercatante in terra di Soldano; // né sommo officio né ordini sacri / guardò in sé” (Inf. 27: 85–91).

  29. 29.

    Schildgen (2002).

  30. 30.

    Caferro (2020).

  31. 31.

    “Si stava in pace, sobria e pudica.” Par. 15: 99.

  32. 32.

    “Non avea catenella, non corona, / non gonne contigiate, non cintura / che fosse a veder più che la persona.” Par. 16: 100–102.

  33. 33.

    “Con più color, sommesse e sopraposte / non fer mai drappi Tartari né Turchi, / né fuor tai tele per Aragne imposte.” Inf. 17: 16–18.

  34. 34.

    Horden and Purcell (2000: 89). I will dwell on their strategic use of this and other quotations from Paradiso 16 in the last section of Chap. 6 and in the Conclusion.

  35. 35.

    Horden and Purcell (2020: 42–60).

  36. 36.

    As quoted in Bouchard and Ferme (2013: 13).

  37. 37.

    Blanks and Frassetto (2016: 4).

  38. 38.

    An approach of this kind is undertaken in the essay collection edited by Carravetta (2019).

  39. 39.

    Kinoshita (2009: 606).

  40. 40.

    At the time, none of these countries was officially a European colony, but the interest in Dante might be read in terms of the Arab antagonism toward increasing European influence in the region. Benigni (2017: 118–119).

  41. 41.

    The contemporaneity of this interest in Italy, France, and the Arab world, as well as in Spain, should be examined in light of the complex political-diplomatic relations in the Mediterranean that preceded World War I and the consolidation of France and England as colonial powers, in competition with Italy and Spain.

  42. 42.

    Asín Palacios (1914: 120–121).

  43. 43.

    Celli (2005a), Marín (2009), López García (2016), and Rapisarda (2005).

  44. 44.

    Burke (1997) and Brentjes et al. (2014: 15).

  45. 45.

    As a priest and a theologian, Asín Palacios seemed to find inspiration in the Renaissance idea of prisca theologia (the ancient or venerable theology). Although the scholar considered himself a historian of religion, his writings on mystics and theologians such as Ibn Masarra, Ibn ‘Arabī, Ibn Ḥazm, St. John of the Cross, St. Teresa of Avila, and Dante should be read as original exercises in theological thinking. In this sense, his comparatism was animated by relevant religious motives. See Celli (2005a) and Aly Ahmed (2018).

  46. 46.

    Kinoshita (2009: 602).

  47. 47.

    Bouchard and Ferme (2013: 28–29).

  48. 48.

    Useful syntheses of this debate are already available. See, for instance, Ziolkowski (2015), with updated bibliography; Capezzone (2011) and Benigni (2017).

  49. 49.

    Mallette (2010: 132–61).

  50. 50.

    See Forte (2013) and Saccone (2017).

  51. 51.

    See also the multifaceted reference to the Mediterranean in Lymberopoulou (2018: 3): “There is no single rule applicable to cross-cultural interaction in the Mediterranean and as such the various forms of symbiosis would have been neither a match made in heaven nor hell on earth. The co-existence between the separate groups was not based upon mutual initiative but rather upon colonisation of the territories of one group by another, involving invariably violence, atrocities and bloodshed.” For a similar idea, in relation to the Iberian world, see Catlos (2018).

  52. 52.

    Valéry (1957: 1265–1279, 2015: 19–35).

  53. 53.

    Valéry (2015: 24).

  54. 54.

    Par. 9: 93. In 49 BC, there was a fierce naval battle in the harbor of Marseilles between Caesar’s fleet, commanded by Brutus, and the local supporters of Pompey. See Purg. 18: 101–102. Also see Pharsalia (3: 572–573), where Lucan writes: “Cruor altus in unda / Spumat, et obducti concreto sanguine fluctus” (“Their blood foamed deep upon the wave, and a crust of gore covered the sea”).

  55. 55.

    Valéry (2015: 25).

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Correspondence to Andrea Celli .

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Celli, A. (2022). Introduction: A Mediterranean Comedy. In: Dante and the Mediterranean Comedy. The New Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-07402-8_1

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