IT327 – Love, Desire and Poetry in Dante and the Italian Middle Ages
Essay questions 2014-15
Note: All students (and especially finalists) are warmly encouraged to use these questions as starting points
for building up their own essay topics, which means that the following list should by no means be intended
as prescriptive. All essay topics must be discussed in advance with the module convenor, ideally between
weeks 8 and 10 (during office hours or by appointment). Drafting an essay plan and discussing it with the
convenor is highly recommended (the convenor will be available to discuss essay plans, in person or byemail, throughout the whole term, and by email only during Spring vacations). Students are also encouraged
to use their bibliographical exercises and/or presentations as a preparatory work for their essays. Careful
proofreading, bibliographical accuracy, and appropriateness in referencing make often the difference, in
dubious cases, between two marks: please adhere carefully to the conventions for footnotes and bibliography
included in the Essay Writing Guide (you can download it from the module’s webpage).
1. Analyze and discuss the metaphor of the ‘book of memory’ in Dante’s Vita Nova, in relation
to the metaphorical value of the book in medieval culture as a whole.
2. Discuss the textual hybridism displayed by Dante’s Vita Nova (prose, poetry, ‘divisions’),
focusing in particular on the editorial problems it presents.
3. Highlight and discuss the affinities and differences between Dante’s Beatrice and the
dompnas of Occitan courtly love.
4. Outline and discuss Dante’s strategy in relation to the courtly canon (Occitan, Sicilian, and
Tuscan), highlighting the ways Dante manages to posit his own work as the peak of an ideal
line running from the courts of Southern France to the Florentine commune.
5. Discuss the simile beloved woman/angel, by comparing Guinizzelli’s Al cor gentil and ch.
23 of the Vita Nova.
6. ‘Dante è un nuovo Orfeo, in quanto poeta che salva e si fa garante dell’immortalità
dell’amata […]. Beatrice è una seconda Euridice, in quanto sottratta alla morte e riportata
alla fama mondana per virtù di poesia’ (G. Gorni). Discuss the theme of death, loss,
memory, and poetry in the Vita Nova, by making, when appropriate, reference to earlier
examples of the theme of the ‘dead beloved’ in the courtly canon (Giacomo da Lentini, Io
m’aggio posto in core, and Giacomino Pugliese, Morte perché).
7. ‘[Dante’s love] is assuredly the love of a man for a woman […]; it is even a profoundly
carnal love, since it is accompanied by physical emotions of extreme violence, but it is a
carnal love of which the object is not itself carnal and which is directed far less towards the
beloved woman than towards the work which she inspires; in short, it is the poet’s love for
the woman whose presence liberates his genius and makes his song burst forth’ (É. Gilson).
Did Beatrice exist? And, which is most important, does it matter? Discuss.
8. Analyze and compare the contexts in which Occitan courtly love and the Stilnovo
respectively germinate, focusing in particular on the differences between the feudal courts of
twelfth-century Provence and the urban environment of late thirteenth-century Florence.
9. Analyze Dante’s dialogue with Bonagiunta in Purg. XXIV, 49-63, and discuss the
implications of Dante’s notion of ‘dolce stil novo’.
10. Discuss the role of Guido Cavalcanti in the Vita Nova, by making reference, when
appropriate, to Cavalcanti’s Donna me prega and to Inf. X.
11. Write a commentary on ONE of the following chapters of the Vita Nova: 1; 10; 17; 23; 3031 (together). Although a commentary-like essay does not normally require the same critical
discussion that is expected in question-based ones, make nonetheless every effort to support
your analysis with appropriate secondary bibliographical sources, to demonstrate awareness
of the broader critical debate on the Vita Nova, and to connect your chosen chapter to the
wider structure of the book.