Dante and the Dynamics of Textual Exchange ─ Authorship, Manuscript Culture, and the Making of the Vita Nova

Dante and the Dynamics of Textual Exchange is the first book-length study to explore the question of poetry and genre in the earliest author's book in Italian by investigating, through an analysis of both textual and manuscript evidence, the ways in which in the Vita Nova (ca. 1292-1294), Dante redefines the medieval theory of authorship as defined by medieval scholars, among whom Bonaventure was the most prominent one. In paying particular attention to complex and multifaceted interactions between different cultures in Italy in the thirteenth century, my book illuminates the multicultural and plurilinguistic society transitioning from the feudal court to the modern city-state, advanced by the rising mercantile class. While current scholarship links Dante's choice of alternating prose and verse (the genre of the prosimetrum) predominantly to Boethius's De ConsolationePhilosophiae, I show that a much broader range of creative, textual, and material elements of the context of book production, both Latin and vernacular, informed Dante's decision. Working at the intersection of textual, material, and cultural elements, this study complements the current state of scholarship by providing information and answers informed by an in-depth analysis of the manuscript culture and its role in the birth and development of European vernacular traditions. Furthermore, my project expands the literature's understanding of the dynamics between a text and its material support by looking at this relationship within a broader framework of intercultural exchange, which suggests an increased dynamics and fluidity between cultures. This aspect of the present study will further contemporary understanding of the long-lasting cultural relationships in the Mediterranean.

Jelena Todorovic is Assistant Professor of Italian at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research interests span from Italian, Medieval Latin, and Old Occitan poetry, to material philology, textual criticism, history of the book. Her essays on Dante's Vita Nova in its manuscript and printed traditions, on Boccaccio's editorial activity, and his Decameron were published or are forthcoming inStudi danteschi, Dante Studies, Heliotropia, Boccaccio in America,Lectura Boccaccii, Boccaccio filologo-filosofo, etc.