Recensione di Luca Marcozzi, Petrarca. La vita e il mondo, Roma, Carocci, 2025, 580 pp. («Frecce»).
The article presents the discovery of two previously unknown troubadour verses added on fol. 108r of a Latin hagiographic manuscript from the library of Saint-Martial de Limoges (Paris, BnF, latin 5611). The significance of this trace lies in its dating (early 13th century, making it one of the earliest written attestations of Occitan lyric) and its localization (the Limousin area, central to the history of troubadour literature but until now lacking preserved documentation). The manuscript also preserves a few verses from poem no. 37 of the Carmina Burana.
The contribution aims to analyse the visual aspects of the ecphrastic episode of the Chambre de Beautés, contained within Benoît de Sainte-Maure’s Roman de Troie. The approach derived from the Visual Studies exalts complex dynamics and interactions between author, artistic objects and receivers, both intra- and extra-diegetic. These are intertwined with the merveille, to which the episode is indebted. From this point of view, its main works of art, the automata, become a key element to shed a light on the cultural and ideological background which influenced the artistic representation.
In a game of equivocation, Jaufre Rudel's vers Lanquan li jorn exploits the alternation of the spatial and temporal meaning of lonh in rhyme in vv. 2 and 4 at coblas I to V, to then move to underline in epistrophe the temporal meaning of the syntagm amor de lonh unchanged in vv. 2 and 4 at coblas VI and VII. In this context, Jaufre would use, as already authoritatively argued by Roncaglia, the topos of distant love or amor de lonh, also used by Propertius (longinquus amor), in the sense of constant and tenacious love, of long duration, to which he aspires. To further support this reading, and in addition to the structural analysis of the song and the examples and reflections already presented in previous publications, to which reference is made, the essay intends to offer some further considerations, and in particular some well-known quotations from classical literature.
