Filigrane. Nuovi tasselli per Petrarca e Boccaccio by Loredana Chines (review)

Loredana Chines's Filigrane¹ is the newest work by the author on Petrarch's poetic production and on the relations, both intellectual and amicable, between Petrarch and Boccaccio.² The volume is presented as a map of new information and acquisitions on the topic, which tackles the difficult task of identifying in Petrarch's and Boccaccio's works all the signs and traces of their own, at times common, idea of literature, the revival of the ancient classics and poetry. As the author makes clear in the preface, Filigrane aims at unveiling all the correspondences we may find through the lines of a text. Notwithstanding the considerable amount of literature on this specific matter, Chines manages to give an update on the most recent scholarly contributions, availing of a double perspective, philological on the one hand, and hermeneutical on the other.

Watermarks, as suggested by the title, refer to a definition inherited from codicology and philology, that of a translucent design stamped in a paper of manufacture to show the maker, and, similarly, that of a hidden trace to be discovered with the help of critical insight. Chines chooses to explore this field with the constant support of texts, manuscripts, and marginalia, underscoring every time all those references (called by the author "segni di particolare attenzione") which are useful to understand the connections between the poets and their books and readings. Thus, we are presented with two authors of the canon, who are simultaneously examined from the points of view of their attitude as writers as well as that of readers and scholars.

Before proceeding to the examination of the chapters and main topics, three precious merits of Filigrane deserve mention: first, Chines adopts a clear and vivid writing style that takes nothing away from an arduous subject; second, the philological framework provides scholars and students with useful 'work tools' for a critical and philological analysis, even for those who are not expert in Petrarch's and Boccaccio's productions; and, last but not least, the continuous reliance on translations (from Latin to Italian) and the accurate bibliography, besides serving as a first-run reading, supply an example of methodological mastery.

The first of the five chapters, Tracce ovidiane, is divided into three subchapters, and points out the importance of specific interpretations of the Ovidian contribution to intertextuality in the Decameron and Rerum vulgarium fragmenta. Lo stupore di Cimone (Decameron V 1), for instance, sheds light on the role of Ovid's Metamorphosis in the framework of the novella; Boccaccio was particularly interested in the less famous of the Latin poet's works (Heroides and Fastorum) and none of Boccacio's codices of Metamorphoses is nowadays extant.³ When drawing inspiration for the description of the epiphany of Ifigenia to an admiring Cimone, Boccaccio had in mind the second book of Ars Amatoria, which he owned (Ricc. 489), and where the Certaldese could read "Amor […] et levis est, et habet geminas, quibus avolet, alas"; those words were followed, in Ovid, by the episode of the fall of Icarus. Turning to Petrarch (Le chiome raccolte di Laura tra Dafne e Diana, Rvf 52), Chines adds an original interpretation of the famous topos of Laura's hair (and, specifically, the moment she ties it), an iconic image which was and still is very successful in Italian poetry, recognizing Met. I 474–77 as its specific 'ipotesto'; in those verses, Dafne, managing to avoid Apollo, modestly collects her clothes and hair: "Aemula Phoebes: vitta coercebat positos sine lege capillos". The same bashfulness of Dafne and Febe-Diana is attributed to Laura, in madrigal 52, and to Petrarch himself in Rvf 23, when the poet, as the hero Atteone, turns into a deer as soon as he notices Laura-Diana bathing. The binomial Laura-Dafne makes sense as long as Petrarch re-uses the ancient myth adapting it to his needs, to 'poeticize' his own experience. This is not exclusively restricted...