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CHAPTER SIX Other Readers, Other Readings Recordar la labor realizada par las "Madrasas" drabes, ateneos y escuelas, asi como la investigadora llevada a cabo par los Monasteries espanoles; la desarrollada par la Escuela de Traductores de Toledo; la Jructifera y destacada de nuestras Universidades; y la creada par Jiguras tan destacadas como Avicena, Averroes, Alfonso X el Sabio, don Raimundo, Mosen ben Hanoc y tantos otros ilustres hombres que destacaron en el siglo XIII, y es entonces cuando, al hacer un sereno andlisis de sus obras y compararlas con el panorama intelectual europeo de su tiempo, tendremos que reivindicar su esjuerzo y aportacion; darles el merito y primacia que dentro de la cultura y civilization europea, corresponde a la inmensa obra llevada a cabo par los espanoles durante el siglo XIII, para nosotros el verdadero principio de lo que doscientos aitos despues se llamo Renacimiento. (We should remember the work accomplished by the Arab madrasas, atheneums and schools, as well as the research carried out by Spanish monasteries; [we should remember] the work carried out by the School of translators at Toledo; the fertile and distinguished work done at our universities; and the work done by figures as illustrious as Avicenna, Averroes, Alfonso the Wise, Raimundo Llul, Moses ben Hanoc, and so many other distinguished individuals who shone in the thirteenth century. It is then, having made a clear and distinterested analysis of their works and having compared these with the intellectual panorama of Europe in their time, that we would have to demand and recover their effort and their contributions. And we would have to accord them the merit and the primacy within European culture and civilization that is that of the great work carried out by Spaniards of the thirteenth century, for us the true beginning of what two hundred years later would be called the Renaissance.) —Juan Fuertes Montalban andjoaqum GimenoBesses , El renacitniento espanol y el siglo XIII Other Readers, Other Readings 138 There is at least one reader of Dante, Boccaccio, who in his own reworking and interpretation of Dante in the Decameron is intrigued by the complexity and problematic nature of literary and philosophical relations with the European-Arabic world—and by Dante's perceptions of them. It is a fortunate coincidence that some of the most exciting work currently being done in Boccaccio scholarship is in the area of its intertextual relations with the Commedia.1 To add to the context of what is already being done, our perceptions of the influential and, for Dante, menacing Arabic world could perhaps help to reshape some of these discussions. Those that come to mind immediately, for example, are stories such as VI, 9, where the questions of Dante's condemnation of Guido Cavalcanti's Averroism is a central topic, as is the question of interpretation itself, which Boccaccio weaves into his recounting of how Guido was (mis)understood by a band of Florentines. The problem of interpretation is not absent from another story (VIII, 9) that also addresses, apparently, contemporary views of Arabic-derived cultural phenomena. This is one of the Bruno and Buffalmaco stories, and it incorporates a variety of relevant characters and prejudices: the doctors, Michael Scot and Avicenna, the latter being unpronounceable to Bruno: —Stanotte fu' io alia brigata, ed cssendomi un poco la reina d'Inghilterra rincresciuta, mi feci venire la gumedra del gran Can d'Altarisi. Diceva il maestro:—Che vuol dir gumedra? Io non gli intendo questi nomi. O maestro mio—diceva Bruno—io non me ne maraviglio, che io ho bene udito dire che Porcograsso e Vannacenanon ne dicon nulla. Disse il maestro:—Tu vuoi dire Ipocrasso e Avicenna! Disse Bruno:—GnafFe! io non so: io m'intendo cosi male de' vostri nomi come voi de' miei; ma la gumedra in quella lingua del gran cane vuol tanto dire quanto imperadrice nella nostra. ("Last night I was with the company, and since I'm getting a little bored with the Queen of England, I had brought to me the gumedra of the Khan of Altarisi ." And the doctor said, "What is gumedra? I don't understand such names [words]." "I'm not surprised, master, since I have heard that neither Porcograsso nor Vannacennatalks about them." "You mean Hippocrates and Avicenna !" he replied. "What do I know!" said Bruno, "I can't understand your words [names] any more than you do mine. But the gumedra in that language of the Great Khan means what empress does in ours.") The possible...

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