Letteratura Franco-italiana

The manuscript BnF fr. 1116 (F) is the best surviving witness of the Devisement dou monde both for the quality of its reading and because it offers the closest version to the original form of the text. The book was written by Marco Polo, who had travelled for 24 years in Asia in the last quarter of the thirteenth century, and Rustichello da Pisa, an Arthurian romance writer, while both were prisoners in Genoa in 1298. The language in which the work was first written – an Old French heavily sprinkled with morphological as well as lexical Italianisms – is considered as a representative example of «Franco-Italian». The great heterogeneity of the texts usually included within this category, however, might provide an incorrect impression as regards both the original linguistic form of the Devisement and the audience to whom it was originally addressed. The language of the ms. BnF fr. 1116 does not display strong similarities to the hybrid language used in Northern Italy for chivalric literature, which is traditionally called «Franco-Italian» or «Franco-Venetan». Some linguistic correspondences enable us to connect the ms. BnF fr. 1116  with the group of Old French manuscripts copied by Pisan scribes while incarcerated in Genoa prison, following the battle of Meloria (1284). The fragment of the Devisement recently discovered by C. Concina appears to be very similar to F. Both graphic and phonetic evidences suggest that this witness, too, has to be localised to Tuscany.

Francigena è una rivista annuale in rete che accoglie contributi scientificamente rilevanti distribuiti sull’intero spettro dei fenomeni rubricabili sotto la categoria di franco-italiano.
Il suo ambito di interesse spazia dunque dall’epica composta in un idioma misto alle opere di varia natura e statuto scritte in lingua d’oïl da autori italiani, fino ai numerosi casi di trascrizione e circolazione di testi oitanici nelle corti e negli scriptoria della penisola.

L’Entrée d’Espagne, poema epico in franco-italiano che riveste una grande importanza per la definizione del milieu del nord Italia all’epoca di Dante, allude alla frequentazione della città di Milano da parte del suo anonimo autore. La datazione del poema si è basata nel corso del Novecento su elementi testuali che suggerivano un retroterra culturale strettamente legato all’ambiente del preumanesimo padovano. Un esame attento della situazione storica e politica dell’area veneta e lombarda negli anni a cui si fa risalire la composizione del poema può rinforzare le conclusioni che sono state tratte dalla lettura analitica del testo, ma può allo stesso tempo aggiungere altri dati, che da un lato confermano la datazione suggerita da Aurelio Roncaglia e accettata da Lorenzo Renzi e d’altro canto possono ampliare lo spettro di informazioni già in nostro possesso riguardo la sua complessa natura di opera ibrida.

Co-authored with Philip E. Bennett
Orable-Guibourc, a Saracen princess in the Guillaume d'Orange (or Monglane) cycle of chansons de geste epitomizes the «Saracen princess» story, in which a Muslim princess abandons her community for love of a Christian fighter. Yet Guibourc's character never becomes truly a part of her new community: linked to her
previous religion and family, fears of treachery distance her from the Christians. Similarly, her having renounced her upbringing keeps her forever from her home, though her husband and family there still claim her as property. Writers from the first Old French texts where she appears through Renaissance Italians play upon this double jeopardy, interpreting and depicting her role and acts in different ways, emphasizing varying aspects of her personality, family and background, keeping her forever different, forever Other. This article outlines some of the historical contexts and forms in which authors worked to produce these avatars of Orable/Guibourc.