Articles and Book Chapters by Catherine Keen
Dante e la cultura fiorentina Bono Giamboni, Brunetto Latini e la formazione intellettuale dei laici, a c. di Z. G. Barański, T. J. Cachey Jr, e L. Lombardo, 2019
MITI FIGURE METAMORFOSI L'OVIDIO DI DANTE a cura di CARLOTA CATTERMOLE e MARCELLO CICCUTO, 2019
Ethics, Politics, and Law in Dante, ed. Giulia Gaimari and Catherine Keen (London: UCL Press), 2019
The Afterlife of Cicero, ed. by Gesine Manuwald (Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, Supplement 135), 2016
This paper discusses medieval Italian reception of Cicero’s works, but also of his fame and polit... more This paper discusses medieval Italian reception of Cicero’s works, but also of his fame and political personality, via a case study of Brunetto Latini’s Rettorica, a partial translation of De inventione. It argues that Brunetto’s approach to authorship and translation in the Rettorica co-opt Cicero’s political and philosophical prestige, so as to present Latini himself as an alter Cicero and potential saviour of the Florentine Republic, against the background of thirteenth-century Tuscan faction politics and his personal exile. The paper discusses the three-fold strategies adopted to further this aim: textual; linguistic; and political. Textually, the Rettorica presents the Ciceronian translation and Brunetto’s accompanying gloss as a dialogue, using rubrication and mise-en-page to collapse the temporal and linguistic divide between the two personae who make up the work’s grammatically-singular doppio autore (double author). Linguistically, the Latin work’s vulgarization into Florentine supports this temporal elision. It also re-inserts Brunetto and his fellow-exiles into the linguistic community of their hometown, and permits Brunetto to demonstrate his importance as a cultural mediator between antiquity and modernity, possessing language skills highly prized in Florence in both oratory and dictamen. Politically, Brunetto’s translated text accommodates extensive selections from the history of the Catilinarian conspiracy, in ways that bolster his self-positioning as a second Cicero, a consummate statesman and rhetorician mistakenly exiled for service of the Republic. My paper examines how Brunetto’s partisan commitment to Florentine Guelf anti-imperialism draws on the image of Cicero’s meritocratic rise to Republican leadership, as a means of opposing contemporary Ghibelline and aristocratic political tendencies. The Rettorica thus not only provides rhetorical instruction to its readers, but also makes the case for Brunetto’s own authoritative reincarnation of the Ciceronian vir magnus et eloquens, whose language inculcates civic values within the political community.
Troubled Vision: Gender, Sexuality, and Sight in Medieval Text and Image, 2004
Se mai continga... Exile, Politcs and Theology in Dante, a cura di Claire E. Honess e Matthew Treherne (Ravenna: Longo), 2013
Italian Studies 64.2, 2009
This article examines the development and use of the congedo, a strophe of closure, as a formal s... more This article examines the development and use of the congedo, a strophe of closure, as a formal structure in the medieval Italian canzone. A historical overview traces its increasingly frequent adoption, from sparse usage by the love poets of Sicily to a regular structural presence in the canzoni of the communal poets, whose broader thematic range included the political and topical. The essay argues that the congedo's standard formulation as an apostrophe from poet to public was especially suited to the new subjectmatter of political exile, permitting authors to make themselves rhetorically present to audiences they could no longer physically reach. Analysis of several selected canzoni from the second half of the Duecento explores a broad range of performative positions adopted by exile speakers in their congedi, and shows the transformative effect that the closing stanza can exert on the overall interpretation of the lyric as a whole.
Annali d'italianistica, 20, 2002
Papers by Catherine Keen
Quaderni di Gargnano
This volume presents the Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Italian Literature i... more This volume presents the Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Italian Literature in the "Gennaro Barbarisi" series, which took place over 15-23 October 2020. To mark the septcentenary of Dante Alighieri's death (1321-2021), the Conference was dedicated to the theme of Dante and the Prosimetrum. From the 'Vita nova' to the 'Convivio'. Due to the pandemic, the conference could not be held in the usual setting of Palazzo Feltrinelli in Gargnano del Garda, but was organized remotely on four individual days, in collaboration between the Department of Literary Studies, Philology and Linguistics of the University of Milan and the Department of Italian of the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. Questo volume raccoglie gli Atti del XIX Convegno internazionale di Letteratura italiana "Gennaro Barbarisi", svoltosi a distanza, a causa della pandemia, tra il 15 e il 23 ottobre del 2020 e dedicato, nella ricorrenza del settecentesimo anniver...
Romanic Review, 2020
This essay uses Bruno Latour’s model of diplomacy from An Inquiry into the Modes of Existence (AI... more This essay uses Bruno Latour’s model of diplomacy from An Inquiry into the Modes of Existence (AIME), alongside the networks/worknets of actor-network theory, to discuss how the medieval Italian writers Brunetto Latini and Dante Alighieri explore experiences of political exile in their vernacular writings. It examines how the two authors reflect on the pluralities of language and community that connect them to readerships both at home and in exile, focusing especially on Brunetto’s Rettorica and Dante’s Convivio. The essay investigates Brunetto’s rhetorical doctrine and Dante’s models of vernacular knowledge sharing by drawing on AIME’s notion of the diplomat, whose measured speech helps “renegotiate the new frontiers of self and other.” It is especially concerned with the modes of engagement Latour labels as the beings of politics [POL], law [LAW], and fiction [FIC].
Miller/A Handbook to the Reception of Ovid, 2014
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Articles and Book Chapters by Catherine Keen
Papers by Catherine Keen