Old French and Romance Legends in Italian Public Script

• In Event: Writing Modern Languages in Renaissance Europe: An Interdisciplinary Approach

Abstract

Among the nearly two hundred Trecento inscriptions we catalogued there are inscriptions in Old French from Piedmont, Umbria, Campania, Veneto; inscriptions in Catalan and Sardinian, and in the whole array of different volgari in use in Italy in the early modern period. Some of them have not enjoyed a written tradition rich enough to afford them with a name, so they are defined by their geographical area only. Two blankets (today separated and preserved in Florence at the Bargello and at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London) produced for the Guicciardini family in Tuscany are embroided with a very complex literary text narrating the stories of Tristam and written in Sicilian. Romance philology is by definition a discipline which transcends national narratives. What can we deduce from these Italian documents of a ‘pan-Romance’ nature in relation to the making of a tradition of writing in the vernacular in Trecento Italy?

Author

• Arianna Punzi, "Sapienza," Università di Roma