Petrarch and Dante: Anti-Dantism, Metaphysics, Tradition

Chapter 1 Between Petrarch and Dante: Prolegomenon to a Critical Discourse

c h a p t e r 1 Between Petrarch and Dante Prolegomenon to a Critical Discourse theodore j. cachey, jr. My choice of title, mirroring the titles of canonical essays by Natalino Sapegno (1963) and Giuseppe Billanovich (1965), is intended in a heuristic and not a hubristic sense.1 Rather than reflect an exaggerated self-confidence on my part, it represents in the first place an invitation to anyone interested in what came “between Petrarch and Dante” to turn (or return) to these classic accounts of Italian literary origins.To this essential list I propose to add a more recent essay by Enrico Fenzi, “Tra Dante e Petrarca: Il fantasma di Ulisse” (2004),2 which takes the Ulysses theme as developed by Petrarch to represent a paradigmatic trait d’union “between” Dante and Petrarch, and thus a privileged vantage point from which to compare and contrast the two auctores. The particular tradition of Italian literary history encapsulated by “Tra Dante e Petrarca,” which Zygmunt Barański characterizes in this volume as the view that Italian literature is “delicately, though reassuringly, caught between the contrasting possibilities offered by its two great exemplary ‘founding fathers,’” will, however, serve here as the basis for observations against the grain of this harmonious critical picture. Informed by the work of the Petrarchan centenary seminars held at the University of Notre Dame in 2004, my essay serves as a prologue-epilogue to our collective reexamination of the question of who and what in fact came between “Petrarch and 3 Baranski 01 2/24/09 3:44 PM Page 3 Dante,” in ideological, historiographical, and rhetorical terms.3 Indeed, the goal of the seminars was to move beyond the simple juxtaposition of “Dante and Petrarch” or “Petrarch and Dante,” as the case may be. As several participants observed, this juxtaposition has sometimes been reduced to more or less neutral (and thus critically inert) descriptions of the pervasive inter-discursive presence of “Dante in Petrarca.”4 In respectful counterpoint to the perspective provided by an illustrious critical tradition, and bolstered by the contributions of colleagues participating in the Notre Dame seminars (mine was last in the series), I begin by suggesting that Petrarch’s deep ideological dissent from Dante can be plausibly linked to the earliest expressions of Trecento anti-dantismo5 discussed by Sapegno, whose critical perspective, however, like most of the Italian critical tradition, elided any connection between these currents and Petrarch. I believe one of the important conclusions to emerge from this volume is that for all Petrarch’s claims of respect and admiration for Dante, he ought to be considered within the tradition of Trecento anti-dantismo, in particular, for his consistently polemical attitude toward the claims of the theologus-poeta, for which there is persuasive evidence throughout his career. Secondly, I will highlight the way in which the currents of influence that flowed between Petrarch and Boccaccio, which are described by Billanovich primarily in terms of Petrarch’s authority vis-à-vis Boccaccio “il più grande discepolo” (the greatest disciple) and the beginnings of Humanism , flowed no less significantly, for the history of vernacular lyric literary history, in the opposite direction from Boccaccio to Petrarch. Boccaccio ’s provocative championing of Dante represented, in fact, a strong stimulus for Petrarch’s renewed engagement with vernacular literature during the Italian phase of his career after 1353. Petrarch’s uncompromising, albeit largely dissembled, post-Provence dedication to the vernacular reflects a significant course correction, when considered against the background of his life and works up until and around 1350. The shift becomes especially evident after 1359, the date of the fateful Familares 21.15,“To Giovanni Boccaccio , a defense against an accusation by envious people,” in which Petrarch famously claimed never to have possessed a Commedia before Boccaccio had sent him one copied in his own hand, and to have avoided reading Dante so as not to be unduly influenced by him.6 Indeed, once the deep ideological divide that separated Petrarch from Dante is clarified, it becomes apparent that it was none other than Gio4 Theodore J. Cachey, Jr. Baranski 01 2/24/09 3:44 PM Page 4 vanni Boccaccio, the so-called third crown of Florentine eloquence, who came “between” Petrarch and Dante, and who spurred Petrarch to vie ever more strenuously with Dante in the vernacular during the latter part of his career. Petrarch, in fact, almost as a sign...