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1.\u00a0 Frye in <\/em><\/strong>Italy<\/em><\/strong>.<\/em><\/strong> \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n The most extensive connection that Frye had with a foreign country was with Italy, a country he visited on seven occasions.\u00a0 In March of 1937, during his first year at Merton College,<\/a> he spent time between terms touring Italy with Mike Joseph, a fellow student, visiting Genoa<\/a>, Pisa<\/a>, Siena<\/a>, Orvieto<\/a>, Rome<\/a> (where they meet another fellow student, Rodney Baine, and two students from Exeter College), Perugia<\/a>, Arezzo<\/a>, Florence<\/a>, San Gimignano<\/a>, Assisi,<\/a> Ravenna<\/a>, Venice<\/a>, Verona<\/a>, Mantua,<\/a> and Milan<\/a>.<\/p>\n Two years later, after Frye has finished his Oxford exams, he and Helen took a hurried trip to the continent, leaving London for Paris in late July and meeting Mike Joseph in Florence for a two\u2011week trip through northern Italy, where they found it difficult to escape the presence of Mussolini<\/a>:<\/p>\n Some of our friends have objected to our taking a holiday in a Fascist<\/a> country, feeling that we ought to spend our handful of vacation money in those noble, generous, brave\u2011spirited, free republics, Great Britain and France. Well, perhaps. Certainly at Sienna, where we had an air\u2011raid practice and a blackout, we began to get restive at being in an officially hostile country with the papers all hermetically sealed against news. \u201cLa politica non \u00e8 serena,\u201d as our landlady said. But surely away up on this mountain, breathing this free mountain air (one of the voices of liberty, according to Wordsworth<\/a>, who ought to have known), we can forget about Mussolini for a few hours.<\/p>\n When we get there we find, however, that the town has been made into a \u201cnational monument\u201d and Mussolini\u2019s plug\u2011ugly sourpuss is plastered all over it. His epigrams, too. For every conspicuous piece of white wall in Italy is covered with mottoes in black letters from his speeches and obiter dicta<\/em>\u2014the successor to the obsolete art of fresco\u2011painting. One of them says, with disarming simplicity, \u201cMussolini is always right.\u201d \u201cThe olive tree has gentle and soft leaves, but its wood is harsh and rough,\u201d says another more cryptically. \u201cWar is to man what maternity is to woman,\u201d says a third. \u201cThe best way to preserve peace is to prepare for war,\u201d says a fourth, and it looks just as silly in Italian as it does in English. Another one of the few not of Mussolini\u2019s authorship reads: \u201cDuce! We await your orders.\u201d Up here they present us with \u201cWe shoot straight.\u201d<\/p>\n One of these, \u201cThe nation should be as strong as the army and the army as strong as the nation,\u201d reminds us how Italy is taxed to the back teeth for her army and how oddly all this gathering of pearls from swine contrasts with the miserable poverty of the town, a poverty as patient and humble as that poor old donkey. But is it so odd? Peasant feeds soldier and soldier kicks peasant\u2014that was the Roman arrangement, so why not now, when the grandeur of Rome is revived and the national emblem once more is a whip? (\u201cTwo Italian Sketches. 1939,\u201d Acta Victoriana<\/em> 67 [October 1942]: 12\u201314, 23; rpt. in Northrop Frye on Modern Culture<\/em>, 188\u201393).\u00a0<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n \u00a0Thirty years later Frye returned to Italy to attend the D\u00e6dalus<\/a> <\/em>Conference at the Villa Serbelloni, Bellagio<\/a>, 31 August\u201310 September, where he presented a paper entitled \u201cThe Critical Path.\u201d\u00a0 Then in 1979 he gave an extensive series of lectures in Italy, speaking on \u201cCastiglione<\/a>,\u201d \u201cShakespeare\u2019s The Tempest<\/em><\/a>,\u201d and \u201cMyth and Literature\u201d in Milan, Florence, Padua, Vicenza<\/a>, Venice, Urbino<\/a>, and Rome, 12 May\u2013June 1.\u00a0 According to William French, the three\u2011week lecture tour was<\/p>\n described by those who were there as a triumph.\u00a0 [Frye] spoke to capacity audiences in Milan, Florence, Venice, Rome, and other cities and was welcomed as an intellectual celebrity. The Italian state television did an interview with him on his critical theories, against a backdrop of Florence, that will lead off a new series on the most influential personalities of the twentieth century.\u00a0 Roloff Beny photographer him in his Rome apartment for his new book, People of Achievement and Influence.\u00a0 There were several other TV, radio, and newspaper interviews, including one by the Communist daily in Rome\u201d (Frye the Conqueror Wows Them in Italy,\u201d Globe and Mail<\/em> [14 June 1979]: 15).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \u00a0In early May of 1979 Frye was interviewed in Toronto prior to his departure for Italy by Gian Piero Brunetta for the newspaper La Repubblica<\/em> (Rome).\u00a0 The other interviews French refers to were by Umberto Eco<\/a> for Alfabeta<\/em>, Claudio Gorlier for Tuttolibri<\/em> (Turin), Beppe Cottefavi for L\u2019Unit\u00e0<\/em>, Gilbert Reid for Canada contemporaneo <\/em>(a magazine Reid was publishing for the Canadian embassy), Sergio Perosa for Il Corriere della Sera <\/em>(Milan), Domenico Petrocelli for Il<\/em> Tempo <\/em>(Rome), Carla Plevano for Il Giornale di<\/em> Vicenza<\/em>, and Angela Barbieri for Il<\/em> Gazzetino <\/em>(Venice).\u00a0 The television interview French mentions was made into a film produced by Claudio Gorlier, Frye a <\/em>Firenze<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Frye\u2019s fifth trip to Italy was in 1987, when he attended a Rome conference devoted to his work, \u201cRitratto di Northrop Frye,\u201d 25\u201327 May. \u00a0He presented a paper at the conference, \u201cMaps and Territories,\u201d which was published in the conference proceedings, Ritratto di Northrop Frye<\/a><\/em>, ed. Agostino Lombardo (Rome: Bulzoni Editore, 1989).\u00a0<\/p>\n In April of 1989 Frye traveled once again to Italy, staying in Venice, Mantua, and Bologna, where he received an honorary degree (D.Litt.) from the University of Bologna<\/a> on 24 April.\u00a0 His address on this occasion was published as \u201cConvocation Address: University of Bologna<\/a>\u201d in Northrop Frye on Literature and Society<\/em> 340\u20136.\u00a0 And on April 17 in Venice he gave a talk, \u201cOn the Bible<\/a>,\u201d at a conference on \u201cVenice and the Study of Foreign Language and Literature,\u201d organized by the language faculty of Ca\u2019Foscari.<\/p>\n Frye\u2019s final trip to Italy was to Palermo<\/a> in September 1990\u2013\u2013four months before his death\u2013\u2013where he received the Primio Mondello<\/a><\/em>, a prestigious prize honoring his lifetime dedication to literature.\u00a0 He attended the citation ceremony at the University of Palmero<\/a>, broadcast live on Italian national television, and the presentation itself the next day in Mondello.<\/p>\n \u00a02. Frye\u00a0on Italy<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n In his notebooks and diaries, Frye often sets down his resolution to learn other languages, and then he berates himself for never being able to realize his dream.\u00a0 But he did make an effort to learn Italian.\u00a0 At the beginning of Notebook 4, most of which is devoted to his 1942 diary, are a series of Italian phrases that represent his earliest recorded effort to learn the language, and he appears to have known more Italian than his comments on language learning might suggest.\u00a0 His notes on Dante, published in Northrop Frye\u2019s Notebooks on the Bible and Other Religious Texts<\/em>, <\/a>derive, not from his use of an English translation, but from the Italian of the Temple Classics edition, ed. Wicksteed and Oelsner.\u00a0 Italian words and phrases are sprinkled through the notebook.\u00a0 Many of the papers presented at the 1987 Ritratto<\/em> conference were in Italian, and when I asked Frye how much he understood from the oral presentations he replied, \u201cAbout 85%.\u201d\u00a0 So while he was not altogether fluent, he could read Italian and understand spoken form with some facility.<\/p>\n Frye\u2019s own writing on Italy and Italian literature include the extensive reports in his 1937 letters to Helen Kemp of his travels throughout the country (see The Correspondence of Northrop Frye and Helen Kemp<\/a><\/em>, 2:717\u201320, 724\u201329, 734\u201346), his Dante notebook, and, the vignettes cited above, \u201cTwo Italian Sketches.\u201d\u00a0 His other Italian writings are:<\/p>\n \u00a0A review of Alessandro Manzoni\u2019s <\/a>The Betrothed<\/a> <\/em>(1952).\u00a0 In Northrop Frye on Literature and Society<\/em>, 318\u201320<\/p>\n \u00a0A review of Alberto Moravia\u2019s Two Adolescents<\/em> (1950), in Northrop Frye on Culture and Literature<\/a><\/em>, 212\u201314; rpt. In Northrop Frye\u2019s Writings on Twentieth\u2011Century Literature<\/em> (forthcoming)<\/p>\n \u00a0\u201cCastiglione\u2019s Il Cortegiano<\/em>.\u201d\u00a0 A 1979 lecture presented in Venice and published as Il \u201cCortegiano\u201d in una societ\u00e0 senza cortigiana<\/em>, trans. Francesca Valente and Alfredo Rizzardi (Urbino: Universita degli studi di Urbino, 1979;) English trans. published in Quaderni d\u2019italianistica<\/em>, 1, no. 1 (1980): 1\u201314, and in Myth and Metaphor<\/a><\/em>; rpt. in Northrop Frye\u2019s Writings on Shakespeare and the Renaissance<\/em> (forthcoming).<\/p>\n \u00a0\u201cVico, Bruno, and the Wake.\u201d\u00a0 A 1985 lecture at the University of California, Berkeley; revised form published as \u201cCycle and Apocalypse in Finnegans Wake<\/em><\/a>\u201d in Vico and Joyce<\/em>, ed. Donald Phillip Verene (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1987, 3\u201319), and in Myth and Metaphor<\/em>; rpt. in Northrop Frye\u2019s Writings on Twentieth\u2011Century Literature<\/em> (forthcoming).<\/p>\n \u00a0The introductory paragraphs of Frye\u2019s \u201cConvocation Address: University of Bologna\u201d (in Northrop Frye on Literature and Society<\/em>, 340\u20136) point to the writings of F.T. Marinetti, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Giosu\u00e8 Carducci, Giuseppe Ungaretti, and Eugenio Montale.<\/p>\n \u00a0Giambattista Vico was, of course, one of Frye\u2019s intellectual heroes.\u00a0 References to his New Science <\/em>appear in chapter 1 of The Great Code<\/em>, in \u201cThe Responsibilities of the Critic,\u201d in Frye\u2019s comment on Peter Hughes\u2019s essay in Yale Italian Studies <\/em>1 (Winter 1977): 91\u20132, and elsewhere.\u00a0 See Nella Cotrupi\u2019s chapter on Vico in Northrop Frye and the Poetics of Process<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0 Throughout Frye\u2019s books, essays, and notebooks one runs across references to Boccaccio<\/a>, Machiavelli<\/a>, and Leopardi<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u00a0Frye also wrote the \u201cIntroduction\u201d to Giorgio Bassani\u2019s Rolls Royce and Other Poems<\/em>, trans. Francesca Valente (Toronto: Aya Press, 1982), 17\u201391, and the introduction to the Italian translation of Irving Layon\u2019s <\/a>The Cold Green Element<\/em>: II freddo verde elemento<\/em> by Irving Layton, trans. Amleto Lorenzini (Turin: Einaudi 1974), v\u2013viii.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0In short, there is a substantial body of Frye\u2019s writing that it attentive to the Italian literary tradition.<\/p>\n \u00a03. Italy on Frye<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0The attention Frye has received internationally has been greater in Italy than in any other country.\u00a0 First, fifteen of Frye\u2019s books have been translated into Italian:<\/p>\n \u00a0Fearful Symmetry<\/em>.\u00a0 Agghiacciante simmetria: Uno studio su William Blake<\/em>.\u00a0 Trans. Carla Plevano Pezzini and Francesca Valente, with the assistance of Amleto Lorenzini.\u00a0 Milan: Longanesi, 1976.\u00a0 492 pp.\u00a0 21.5 x 14.5 cm.\u00a0 Contains, in addition to the preface of the 1947 English edition, another preface written in 1975 for this translation.\u00a0 Illustrations follow p. 64.\u00a0 Stiff paper wrappers.<\/p>\n \u00a0Anatomy of Criticism<\/em>.\u00a0 Anatomia della critica: Quattro saggi<\/em>.\u00a0 <\/em>Trans. Paola Rosa-Clot and Sandro Stratta, revised with the help of Amleto Lorenzini.\u00a0 Torino: Einaudi, [1972].\u00a0 484 pp.\u00a0 18.1 x 10.7 cm.\u00a0 No index in this translation.\u00a0 2nd (revised) ed. of a 1969 tranlation vy Rosa\u2011Clot and Stratta.\u00a0 Reissued 2000.\u00a0 Paperback.<\/p>\n \u00a0The Educated Imagination<\/em>.\u00a0 L\u2019immaginazione coltivata<\/em>.\u00a0 Trans. Amleto Lorenzini and Mario Manzari.\u00a0 Milan: Longanesi, 1974.\u00a0 125 pp.\u00a0 18.4 x 11.8 cm.\u00a0 Stiff paper wrappers.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0Fables of Identity<\/em>.\u00a0 Favole d\u2019identit\u00e0: Studi di mitologia poetica<\/em>.\u00a0 Trans. Ciro Monti.\u00a0 Torino: Einaudi, 1973.\u00a0 ix + 346 pp.\u00a0 18 x 10.5 cm.\u00a0 Paperback.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0T.S. Eliot<\/em>.\u00a0 Eliot<\/em>.\u00a0 Trans. Gino Scatasta.\u00a0 Bologna: Il Mulino, 1989.\u00a0 126 pp.\u00a0 20.4 x 12.3 cm.\u00a0 Paperback.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0The Well\u2011Tempered Critic<\/em>.\u00a0 Il<\/em> critico ben temperato<\/em>.\u00a0 <\/em>Trans. Amleto Lorenzini and Mario Manzari.\u00a0 Milan: Longanesi, 1974.\u00a0 141 pp.\u00a0 18.4 x 11.7 cm.\u00a0 Stiff paper wrappers.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0Fools of Time<\/em>.\u00a0 Tempo che opprime, tempo che redime: Riflessioni sul teatro di Shakespeare<\/em>.\u00a0 Trans. Valentina Poggi and Maria Pia De Angelis.\u00a0 Bologna: Il Mulino, 1986.\u00a0 197 pp.\u00a0 21.2 x 13.3 cm.\u00a0 Part 1 (pp. 13\u2013113) is a trans. by Valentina Poggi of Fools of Time<\/em>. <\/em>\u00a0Part 2 (pp. 115\u2013197) is a trans. by Maria Pia De Angelis of The Myth of Deliverance<\/em>.\u00a0 Paperback.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0The Modern Century<\/em>.\u00a0 Cultura e miti <\/em>del<\/em> nostro tempo<\/em>.\u00a0 Trans. Vittorio Di Giuro.\u00a0 Milano: Rizzoli, 1969.\u00a0 120 pp.\u00a0 20.6 x 14.8 cm.\u00a0 Stiff paper wrappers.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0The Stubborn Structure<\/em>.\u00a0 L\u2019ostinata struttura: saggi su critica e societ\u00e0<\/em>.\u00a0 Trans. Leonardo Terzo and Anna Paschetto.\u00a0 Rev. by Amleto Lorenzini.\u00a0 Milano: Rizzoli, 1975.\u00a0 267 pp.\u00a0 21.7 x 13.9 cm.\u00a0 Paperback.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0The Secular Scripture<\/em>.\u00a0 La scrittura secolare: Studio sulla struttura \u201cromance<\/em>.\u201d<\/em>\u00a0 Trans. Amleto Lorenzini.\u00a0 Bologna: Il Mulino, 1978.\u00a0 191 pp.\u00a0 21.3 x 13.1 cm.\u00a0 Paperback.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0The Great Code<\/em>.\u00a0 Il grande codice: la Bibbia e la letteratura<\/em>.\u00a0 <\/em>Trans. Giovanni Rizzoni.\u00a0 Torino: Einaudi, 1986.\u00a0 306 pp.\u00a0 20.4 x 12.3 cm.\u00a0\u00a0 Paperback.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0The Myth of Deliverance<\/em>.\u00a0 Tempo che opprime, tempo che redime: Riflessioni sul teatro di Shakespeare<\/em>.\u00a0 Trans. Valentina Poggi and Maria Pia De Angelis.\u00a0 Bologna: Il Mulino, 1986.\u00a0 197 pp.\u00a0 21.2 x 13.3 cm.\u00a0 Part 1 (pp. 13-113) is a trans. by Valentina Poggi of Fools of Time<\/em>.\u00a0 <\/em>Part 2 (pp. 115-197) is a trans. by Maria Pia De Angelis of The Myth of Deliverance<\/em>.\u00a0 Paperback. \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0Northrop Frye on Shakespeare<\/em>. \u00a0Shakespeare: Nove lezioni<\/em>.\u00a0 Trans. Andrea Carosso.\u00a0 Torino: Einaudi, 1990.\u00a0 x + 201 pp.\u00a0 25 x 12.3 cm.\u00a0 Paperback.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0Words with Power<\/em>.\u00a0 Il potere delle parole: Nuovi studi su Bibbia e letteratura<\/em>.\u00a0 <\/em>Trans. Eleonora Zoratti.\u00a0 Florence: La Nuova Italia Editrice, 1994.\u00a0 viii + 355 pp.\u00a0 21 x 12.7 cm.\u00a0 Stiff paper wrappers.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0The Double Vision<\/em>.\u00a0 La duplice visione: linguaggio e significato nella religione<\/em>.\u00a0 Trans. Francesca Valente Gorjup and Carla Plevano Pezzini.\u00a0 Preface by Agostino Lombardo.\u00a0 Venice: Marsilio, 1993.\u00a0 101 pp.\u00a0 21.3 x 15.4 cm.\u00a0 Paperback.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0In addition, Carla Pezzini Plevano and Francesca Valente Gorjup have translated a selection of Frye\u2019s essays from the 1980s, entitled Mito<\/em> metafora simbolo<\/em>.\u00a0 <\/em>Roma: Editori Riuniti, 1989.\u00a0 218 pp.\u00a0 21.5 x 14.4 cm.\u00a0 Paperback.\u00a0 This collection contains [English titles]: \u201cThe Mythical Approach to Creation\u201d \/ \u201cThe Expanding World of Metaphor\u201d \/ \u201cVision and Cosmos\u201d \/ \u201cThe Symbol as a Medium of Exchange\u201d \/ \u201cThe Stage Is All the World\u201d \/ \u201cThe Survival of Eros in Poetry\u201d \/ \u201cThe Bride from the Strange Land\u201d \/ \u201cCastiglione\u2019s Il Cortegiano<\/em>\u201d \/ \u201cThe Tempest<\/em>\u201d \/ \u201cCycle and Apocalypse in Finnegans Wake<\/em>\u201d \/ \u201cBlake\u2019s Bible\u201d \/ \u201cThe Meeting of Past and Future in William Morris\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0Carla Plevano Pezzini <\/em>has translated another collection of Frye\u2019s essays: La letteratura e le arti visive e altri saggi<\/em>.\u00a0 Catanzaro: Abramo, 1993.\u00a0 198 pp.\u00a0 18 x 10 cm.\u00a0 Stiff paper wrappers.\u00a0 This volume contains [English titles]:\u00a0 \u201cThe Responsibilities of the Critic\u201d \/ \u201cApproaching the Lyric\u201d \/ \u201cThe World as Music and Idea in Wagner\u2019s Parsifal<\/em>\u201d \/ \u201cLiterature as a Critique of Pure Reason\u201d \/ \u201cBlake\u2019s Biblical Illustrations\u201d \/ \u201cLiterature and the Visual Arts\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0A third book\u2011length collection is Frammenti critici<\/em>, ed. and trans. Stefano Calabrese and Daniela Feltracco.\u00a0 Parma: Monte Universit\u00e0 Parma Editore, 2005.\u00a0 174 pp.\u00a0 21.1 x 14 cm.\u00a0 Paper wrappers, French fold.\u00a0 This volume is a selection of entries from Frye\u2019s notebooks.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0Secondary sources<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0The proceedings of the 1987 Rome conference, mentioned in the previous blog, were published as Ritratto de Northrop Frye<\/em>, ed. Agostino Lombardi.\u00a0 Rome: Bulzoni Editore, 1989.\u00a0 This volume contains Northrop Frye, \u201cMaps and Territories\u201d \/ Remo Ceserani, \u201cPrimo approccio alla teoria critica di Frye: Riflessioni attorno al concetto di modo\u201d \/ Sergio Perosa, \u201cIncontri con Frye\u201d \/ Roberto Cresti, \u201cCritical Theory and Literary Experience in Northrop Frye\u201d \/ Francesco Guardiani, \u201cLe categorie di Frye dall\u2019Anatomia della Critica<\/em> al Grande Codice<\/em>\u201d \/ Dominico Pietropaolo, \u201cFrye, Vico, and the Grounding of Literature and Criticism\u201d \/ Frank Kermode, \u201cNorthrop Frye and the Bible\u201d \/ Piero Boitani, \u201cCodex Fryeanus 0\u201315\u2013136903\u2013X: A Medieval Reading of The Great Code<\/em>\u201d \/ Giorgio Mariani, \u201cNorthrop Frye and the Politics of the Bible\u201d \/ Jan Ulrik Dyrkj\u00f8b, \u201cNorthrop Frye\u2019s Visionary Protestantism\u201d \/ Paolo Russo, \u201cThe Word as Event\u201d \/ Paola Colaiacomo, \u201cLa lett\u00e9ratura come potere\u201d \/ Keir Elam, \u201cA Natural Perspective<\/em>: Frye on Shakespearean Comedy\u201d \/ Agostino Lombardo, \u201cNorthrop Frye e The Tempest<\/em>\u201d \/ Francesco Marroni, \u201cFrye, Shakespeare e \u2018la parola magica\u2019\u201d \/ Stefana d\u2019Ottavi, \u201cFrye e Blake\u201d \/ Christina Bertea, \u201cFrye e la fiaba\u201d \/ Carlo Pagetti, \u201cFrye cittadino di utopia\u201d \/ Caterina Ricciardi, \u201cFrye, l\u2019America e le finzioni supreme\u201d \/ Eleanor Cook, \u201cAgainst Monism: The Canadian Anatomy of Northrop Frye\u201d \/ Robert Kroetsch, \u201cLearning the Hero from Northrop Frye\u201d \/ Alessandro Gebbia, \u201cL\u2019idea di lett\u00e9ratura canadese in Frye\u201d \/ Alfredo Rizzardi, \u201cNorthrop Fry e la poesia canadese\u201d \/ Richard Ambrosini, \u201cFrom Archetypes to National Specificity\u201d \/ Maria Micarelli, \u201cLa visione sociale di Northrop Frye\u201d \/ Francesca Valente, \u201cNorthrop Frye the Teacher: Education and Literary Criticism\u201d \/ Robert D. Denham, \u201cAn Anatomy of Frye\u2019s Influence\u201d \/ Baldo Meo, \u201cLa Fortuna di Frye in Italia\u201d \/ Alessandro Gebbia and Baldo Meo, \u201cBibliografia di Northrop Frye, con una appendice delle\u00a0 traduzioni e dei contribute critica italiani\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0Italian books devoted in their entirety to Frye are<\/strong>:<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Ricciardi, Caterina.\u00a0 Northrop Frye, o, delle finzioni supreme<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0 Rome: Empir\u00eca, 1992.<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Feltracco, Daniela.\u00a0 <\/a>Northrop Frye: Anatomia di un metodo critico<\/a>.<\/em>\u00a0 Udine: Forum, Editrice \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Universitaria Udinese, 2005.<\/p>\n The hundreds of items in the additional secondary literature on Frye in Italian are too expansive to list here. The list would include separate essays on his work, interviews, reviews of his books (both the English editions and Italian translations), and newspaper accounts of his Italian lecture series.<\/p>\n \u00a0* * *<\/p>\n Northrop Frye, \u201cConvocation Address: University of Bologna\u201d:<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Dante\u2019s De Vulgari Eloquentia<\/em> is unfinished and outdated by his own practice in the Commedia<\/em>, but it deals with two questions of genuine critical concern, even if they seem at first contradictory questions.\u00a0 He begins by dividing languages into the primary and secondary, those we learn in infancy and those we acquire by education.\u00a0 One is natural speech, the other structured speech with a specialized vocabulary.\u00a0 The former, Dante says, is the \u2018nobler\u2019 of the two, being one step closer to the speech that God gave Adam in Paradise.\u00a0 But after making this distinction, his argument apparently goes in the opposite direction.\u00a0 In Italy the \u2018natural\u2019 speech is some form of local dialect, and what is needed for first-rate literature, Dante feels, is a standard Italian, which is lacking because there is no imperial court in Rome to provide a place for it to develop.<\/p>\n Like everyone in his day, Dante assumed that the genres and dictions available in literature formed a hierarchy with an aristocracy at the top, and that the aristocratic forms were those most fitting for a discriminating audience.\u00a0 The canzone, for example, is \u2018nobler\u2019 than the ballate, and the eleven-syllable line \u2018nobler\u2019 than the seven-syllable one [bk. 2, chap. 3].\u00a0\u00a0 By this time we seem a long way from the opening assertion that one\u2019s native speech is \u2018nobler\u2019 than the more structured language taught us at school.\u00a0 But if we turn to the Commedia<\/em> we can see how completely that poem resolves the contradictions in Dante\u2019s argument.\u00a0 Nothing could be \u2018nobler\u2019 for Italian readers than having so gigantic a work immediately intelligible in their own language; yet it is of course a work that repays the most exhaustive and detailed study.\u00a0<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0 1.\u00a0 Frye in Italy. \u00a0 The most extensive connection that Frye had with a foreign country was with Italy, a country he visited on seven occasions.\u00a0 In March of 1937, during his first year at Merton College, he spent time between terms touring Italy with Mike Joseph, a fellow student, visiting Genoa, Pisa, Siena, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[16,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bob-denham","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n